In Hong Kong, we build a global business empire

Chapter 988 Privatization Progresses Rapidly!

After confirming the candidate, Lin Haoran called John Reed.

If he were to rashly attempt to recruit Clifford Perlman, the former president and CEO of Caesars Palace, he might not be able to succeed.

Therefore, it would be better to have Citibank's headhunting team contact the other party first.

"Lin, I have good news for you. Today we officially reached an agreement with Fidelity Investments. Fidelity Investments is willing to transfer all of their shares in MGM Studios to you!"

After the call connected, before Lin Haoran could even tell John Reed his request, John Reed excitedly told him.

Four days of propaganda warfare, four days of stock price declines, and four days of market panic have finally forced those institutional shareholders who had been waiting for a higher price to stop sitting still.

Lin Haoran was naturally overjoyed upon hearing this.

Fidelity Investments is the second-largest shareholder of MGM China, holding as much as 8.8% of the shares. Although news has been flooding the media these past few days expressing skepticism about Lin Haoran's acquisition of MGM, the company is not in a hurry to sell.

Citibank contacted the other party, but they insisted on a high price before they would sell, and their attitude was very tough.

The negotiation team made no progress after several meetings, and the other party's representative even said, "We will not consider selling unless there is a 40% premium."

Now that they have not only softened their stance but also accepted a discount, it shows that the impact of the propaganda war has exceeded Lin Haoran's expectations. Even giants like Fidelity Investments are starting to panic, not to mention smaller institutions and retail investors.

The reason is actually quite simple: no shareholder wants to continue holding a company besieged by the media, nor do they want to deal with a boss who is ostracized by Hollywood.

For these institutions, it's definitely time to exit, and the sooner the better. Otherwise, as market panic spreads further and stock prices continue to fall, their shares will become even less valuable.

Rather than gambling on an uncertain future, it's better to cash out and leave while there are still people willing to take the bait.

This is the logic of institutional investors: it's not because they are optimistic or pessimistic about the company, but because they choose the option that is most beneficial to themselves after weighing the risks and returns.

When public opinion was clearly unfavorable to Lin Haoran, when the stock price fell for four consecutive days, and when the market was generally pessimistic about MGM's future, the risks of continuing to hold the stock outweighed the potential gains.

This was also thanks to the fact that in the early stages of privatization, Citigroup and Universal Investment Company did not make a big splash in the secondary market, but rather acted like a quiet shark swimming around, leaving no ripples on the surface of the water.

They used dozens of accounts, spread across more than a dozen different brokerages, and kept each transaction within five percent of the total daily trading volume. No one noticed that someone was quietly buying in.

The market panic is real, the stock price decline is real, the institutional sell-off is real, and the exodus of retail investors is real.

No one knows that behind these panic sell-offs, a huge net is slowly closing in.

On the day of the press conference, the six Hollywood giants also had a plan to jointly increase Lin Haoran's cost of privatizing MGM.

However, after seeing the propaganda war cause MGM's stock price to continue to fall and institutional shareholders to panic and leave, their plan to "jointly raise the cost of privatization" was put on hold indefinitely.

The reason is simple: the stock price has already fallen so much that if they want to raise the price, someone has to sell first.

Now that institutional shareholders are scrambling to exit, who will help them drive up the price?

Moreover, although the six giants are financially strong, raising prices means losing money, especially if prices fall after they are raised. Their money doesn't grow on trees, and given the current favorable situation for them, it's not worth throwing away their hard-earned money just to hurt Lin Haoran.

Lin Haoran leaned back on the sofa, listening to John Reed recount the details of Fidelity Investments' transactions.

"Fidelity Investments' negotiators said on the phone that they did not want to continue holding a company besieged by the media, nor did they want to deal with a boss who was rejected by Hollywood."

They want to withdraw, the sooner the better, and the price will be what we offered. Lin, listen to this reason: they're being besieged by the media and rejected by Hollywood.

Isn't this exactly the effect those squid guys wanted? They thought they were attacking you, but they ended up scaring Fidelity away for us.

I wonder what Lou Wasserman's expression would be if he knew that his four-day public relations campaign had saved us nearly ten million dollars from Fidelity Investments.

Lin Haoran chuckled softly and asked, "John, which company is Fidelity Investments now?"

“In the past few days, we have reached transactions with institutions almost every day. The second day after the press conference saw the most transactions, with a total of 4 institutions. After that, we have reached transactions with institutions every day, ranging from 2 to 3. Including the 2 transactions we reached today, we have acquired shares of MGM Studios or MGM Grand Hotel from 13 institutions.”

"These institutions include T. Rowe Price, State Street Bank, Vanguard Group, and so on. Basically, they have reached agreements with us on the main shareholding structure. There are still a few small and medium-sized institutions with less than 3% shareholding that have not yet reached an agreement, but their attitude has softened."

Based on the current trend, we should have acquired all institutional shareholders within a week at most.

John Reed's voice carried an barely suppressed excitement. As Lin Haoran's closest ally, John Reed was naturally honored to have helped him advance the privatization process so smoothly.

Citibank invested a lot of resources in this matter, mobilizing almost its entire intelligence, transaction, legal, and headhunting teams.

If Lin Haoran were not an executive director of Citibank, and if Citibank did not consider him one of its own, such resource investment would be unimaginable.

Of course, Lin Haoran also needed to spend money. Citibank is not a charity, and you have to pay for helping others. But relatively speaking, this money was well spent.

Without connections, even spending ten times the amount of money wouldn't guarantee the same results.

Those institutional shareholders' phone numbers, those connections at the negotiating table, those information networks hidden behind the deals—these aren't things money can buy.

Lin Haoran borrowed what Citibank had accumulated over a century of time for just a few million dollars in consulting fees. No matter how you look at it, it's a win-win situation.

"So, how many shares do I currently hold in each of these two companies?" Lin Haoran asked curiously.

He bought 47% of MGM Studios and 52% of MGM Grand Hotel from Kirk Koccorian. He was also curious about how far the privatization process had progressed, considering the transactions in the past few days.

John Reed's voice came through the phone as he flipped through documents. Soon after, he said, "Lin, including the shares you bought from Mr. Kirk Koccorian, the stocks you acquired on the secondary market, and the shares that Citigroup transferred from institutions in the past few days, your current shareholding in MGM Studios has reached 75.6%, and your shareholding in MGM Grand Hotel has reached 84.8%!"

"The privatization process of MGM Grand Hotel is actually faster than that of MGM Studios?" Lin Haoran was somewhat surprised.

After all, the overwhelming pessimism these past few days has mostly come from MGM Studios, since the Hollywood giants are behind this public opinion storm, and they naturally wouldn't target MGM Grand Hotel.

What does the MGM Grand Hotel have to do with these Hollywood moguls?

Their battlefield is in Hollywood, in movie theaters, on those shimmering screens, not in the casinos of Las Vegas.

The reality is that he now controls nearly ten percentage points more of MGM Grand Hotels than MGM Studios.

This contrast surprised even himself.

"The reason is actually quite simple. MGM Studios has a much larger number of shares in circulation than MGM Grand Hotel. Secondly, although few media outlets have attacked your takeover of MGM Grand Hotel, in the eyes of investors, Kirk Koccorian is the soul of MGM Grand Hotel."

Now that this key figure has abandoned the MGM Grand Hotel and sold it to you, a foreign businessman who has never run a casino before, investors' confidence in the MGM Grand Hotel has naturally been greatly diminished.

"They don't believe in you, just like Wall Street doesn't believe a hamburger vendor would run an airline. It's not about you personally; it's an instinctive skepticism about cross-industry ventures," John Reed explained with a laugh.

After listening to John Reed's analysis, Lin Haoran immediately understood.

Kirk Kocorian has been in business in Las Vegas for decades, and his name is synonymous with the MGM Grand Hotel.

Now that the signboard has been changed to Lin Haoran, a real estate businessman from Hong Kong, what will investors think?

They'd wonder, does this person understand casinos? Does he understand Las Vegas? Does he understand the betting industry?

The answer is obviously no.

So they are running.

It wasn't because they believed the media reports, but because they didn't believe Lin Haoran could run the MGM Grand Hotel well.

This is a judgment based on common sense, not panic based on emotions.

This kind of judgment based on common sense is more difficult to reverse than panic based on emotions.

Because emotions will pass, but common sense won't.

Lin Haoran can appease investors' emotions with positive reports after the media battle, but he cannot change their preconceived notions about a cross-industry operator in a short period of time.

This takes time, it requires results, and it needs to be proven with facts. Lin Haoran smiled; it's fine if they're not optimistic!

He wasn't personally running the casino, so he wasn't worried at all about the MGM Grand Hotel's future decline.

With Las Vegas, a world gambling capital that will only become more prosperous, as long as he invites a capable professional manager to take the helm, the MGM Grand Hotel's performance will not be bad.

Las Vegas is like a money printing machine; as long as you don't mess with it, it will keep spitting out money.

Kirk Kocorian can make money, and so can everyone else.

Now, Lin Haoran has his sights set on Clifford Perlman, the former president of Caesars Palace. As long as he can bring him under his wing, he has no worries about the future of the MGM Grand Hotel.

He has vast funds, and Clifford Perlman has the ability, connections, and experience. With the two of them working together, the future of MGM Grand will not be worse than that of MGM Grand under Kirk Kochrian, and may even be better!

"By the way, Lin, I haven't asked you why you called this time. You never call unless you have something important to say, so there must be something else going on!" John Reed asked with a smile as Lin Haoran was pondering.

Lin Haoran snapped out of his daze and said, "I do have something to discuss with you. Didn't I say before that I wanted to find a suitable professional manager for the MGM Grand Hotel?"

I've reviewed the information and believe that Mr. Clifford Perlman, the former president of Caesars Palace, is a very suitable candidate. Therefore, I've asked your headhunting team to contact him in advance to explore the feasibility of inviting him to become the president of MGM Grand Hotel.

By the way, this matter needs to be handled discreetly. After all, if I want Clifford Perlman to become the president of MGM Grand, it would be good news for MGM Grand, which would be very detrimental to the privatization of MGM Grand!

“Don’t worry about that,” John Reed said with a shrewd composure. “I will send my most trusted people there, and no news will leak out. We will also ask Mr. Clifford Perlman to keep it a secret.”

I believe he's a smart man and wouldn't do something like leaking information. Once things go smoothly, I'll arrange for you to meet with him!

“Okay, thank you for your help, John,” Lin Haoran said.

"It's what I should do, Lin. I won't bother you anymore. Contact me anytime if you need anything!"

"OK Bye Bye."

After hanging up the phone, Lin Haoran thought about the conversation he had just had and couldn't help but feel a little emotional.

Unexpectedly, in just a few days, his shareholding in these two companies has already reached this level.

The privatization of MGM Studios is a done deal, and MGM Grand Hotel is only on its last legs.

Those squid people still thought their propaganda war had worked, still thought Lin Haoran was too scared to speak up, and still thought victory was in sight.

Unbeknownst to them, while they thought they had outmaneuvered their prey, the hunter and the prey had already quietly switched places.

Meanwhile, those people in Hollywood are still waiting.

They waited for Lin Haoran to speak, for Lin Haoran to refute, and for Lin Haoran to jump into the rhythm they had set.

They didn't know that Lin Haoran had no intention of following their lead.

He has his own rhythm, his own plans, and his own timetable.

They fight their battles, he fights his.

They'll probably be completely dumbfounded when they realize what's happening.

Footsteps came from behind.

Lin Haoran turned around and saw Kirk Kocorian, wearing a dark blue polo shirt, khaki casual pants, and soft-soled leather shoes, walking into the office of the Reno MGM Grand Hotel with a smile.

"Lin, I just heard you on the phone, laughing so happily. Is there some good news again?" Kecorian walked to the sofa, plopped down, and crossed his legs.

After a few days of getting to know each other, the two became quite familiar with each other.

Although Kirk Kocorian wields considerable influence in Las Vegas, he knows that compared to super-rich individuals like Lin Haoran, whose assets exceed tens of billions, his own wealth is far inferior, and he has no right to act arrogantly due to his seniority.

Moreover, although the two will become competitors in the future, he also felt that having a capitalist like Lin Haoran enter Las Vegas might not necessarily be a bad thing for the city.

Las Vegas needs new capital, new faces, and new ideas.

The generation that built the city from the desert, but it cannot rely on old methods to maintain its prosperity.

Lin Haoran brought not only money, but also a global perspective and the ability to integrate across industries.

These are things that the generation of Kecorian lacked, and they are what Las Vegas will need in the future.

So even though he wanted to build a new hotel to compete with Lin Haoran, he never regarded Lin Haoran as an enemy; otherwise, he wouldn't have sold the MGM Grand Hotel.

In the business world, competition is the best form of cooperation.

Everyone should use their own abilities to make the pie bigger; it's good for everyone.

Las Vegas is different from Hollywood. In its early days, Las Vegas was indeed started by Jewish gangs, but now it has become a diverse and vibrant place where various capitals and forces converge and integrate. It is no longer something that can be monopolized by any one circle.

The rules here are simple: if you have money and skills, you can make money.

No one will exclude you because of your identity, nor will anyone make things difficult for you because of your background.

Las Vegas is an open city that welcomes anyone willing to invest here.

“Mr. Kerkorian, there is indeed good news. Several large institutions have agreed to sell their shares to me!” Lin Haoran said simply.

As for inviting Clifford Perlman to join the MGM Grand Hotel, Lin Haoran did not intend to reveal it before the agreement was reached, especially not to Kirk Koccorian.

After all, he knew that Kirk Kocorian was also very interested in Mr. Clifford Perlman, the former head of Caesars Palace.

In another world, a few years later, Kirkkorian would invite Perlman to become the chairman of his new company.

If Kecorian knew that Lin Haoran was contacting Perlman, would he also try to take him away?

Lin Haoran didn't want to take that risk.

In the business world, it's better to avoid trouble, especially when it comes to competing for talent. It's best to keep a low profile.

Once he signs Perlman, even if Kecorian wanted to steal him, he wouldn't be able to.

By then, it will be too late for him to be envious.

"This is indeed good news, but Lin, are you not going to respond to any of the public opinion? Those media outlets are criticizing you every day, saying you don't understand movies, saying you will ruin MGM, saying you are an outsider."

"You're just going to put up with this? Judging from your past behavior, you're not the type to tolerate things." Kerkorian leaned back on the sofa and asked curiously.

Lin Haoran's many deeds have already been reported countless times by the media.

In many people's eyes, he was a man who always sought revenge, such as driving the powerful trading firm Jardine Matheson out of Hong Kong and bankrupting George Soros' Quantum Fund.

Therefore, Kerkorian's doubts were not without reason.

In his view, how could someone who could drive Jardine Matheson out of the market in Hong Kong and bankrupt Soros' Quantum Fund on Wall Street not utter a single word after being besieged by hundreds of media outlets for several days?

This is not in line with Lin Haoran's usual style of doing things.

When he was in Hong Kong, he was known for his vengeful nature, and not just for petty revenge, but for being a ruthless character who would beat people to a pulp with a single move.

Kerkorian found it unbelievable that someone could be insulted for four days without retaliating. (End of Chapter)