Back To 1995

  Chapter 906 Sharpening the knife

   Surya is not the first person to question Song Yang's investment in Amazon. There are other stock critics, such as Abelson, who has been a stock critic for most of his life, who is over seventy years old, and also praised Surya's comments.

   Regarding Amazon, Abelson also tried his best to ridicule, "A ranch owner loses fifty dollars selling an animal, but now the ranch owner actually says that his orders have increased and his business has improved!"

   Even Song Yang and Abelson were included in the arrangement. "The most amusing thing is that there are still people who agree with the decision of the ranch owner, so that he will lose more. Someone always seems to regard himself as the savior..."

   Abelson has his own special issue on "Barron's Weekly", which claims to have fired the first shot of the Internet bubble. Barron's Weekly has been in the limelight during the Internet bubble and is considered one of the gravediggers of the Internet bubble.

   And now, Abelson made a comment in Barron's Weekly, bombarding Amazon again, and with Surya's comments, Amazon seemed to be in jeopardy for a while.

  “At the end of this year, we may witness the end of an era. Amazon still has someone’s investment myth…”

Surya, who came out of the program TV station, published a prediction on her personal blog, predicting that Amazon would not be able to survive this year. will be broken.

Surya and Abelson’s comments seemed to have indeed affected investors. After the market opened the next day, Amazon’s stock price plummeted again. Yesterday, Spark Fund invested heavily and pulled Amazon’s stock price to more than $15. Falling back, even Song Yang seemed unable to save Amazon, who had been handpicked by Surya!

This time, Surya became even more famous, and his followers grew a bit bigger, as if he had become the opinion leader of the American stock market. Surya took the opportunity to publish several analysis reports on Amazon's inability to continue. , Then walked into the office of the director of Lehman Investment Bank and handed in a resignation letter.

Water flows to the bottom, but people go to the top. At the Lehman Brothers investment bank, Surya was just a bond analyst. Now he has a reputation, but his salary is far from what his reputation should be. Well, as long as he is still in this position, he is at most a well-known analyst, that's all, luxury cars, villas, private yachts and so on, basically he has nothing to do with him.

Many short-selling hedge funds have invited Surya before, and they want to use Surya's reputation. With Surya's current reputation, he only needs to publish a crisis report on a certain company, and the hedge funds will take advantage of the trend to short that company. Company, isn't this easy to grasp, to cut the leeks until the hands are soft?

But Surya didn't agree before, but now, Surya feels that the fire is coming, and Amazon is his battle for fame. No matter how he analyzes it, Amazon is really hopeless. He is sure that he can make Amazon delisted, and his advantage lies in him!

Not only Amazon, but even Song Yang will be killed by him this time. Surya feels that it is time to enjoy the fruits of victory. After resigning from Lehman Investment Bank, Surya turned around and joined a hedge fund, personally managing a fund manager!

Since the establishment of Amazon, Bezos has issued a letter to shareholders every year. In this year's open letter to Amazon shareholders, Bezos still firmly stated that he will not stop expanding for short-term performance. Stop storage centers, distribution centers, etc., Amazon will not listen to Surya Raoshiko's words to change Amazon!

  As soon as this open letter was released, Amazon’s stock price fell below $10, and countless investors scolded Bezos, and Surya’s words began to be regarded as the truth by many leeks!

  Bezos rushed from the Phoenix headquarters to San Jose, and now Bezos and the group of Silicon Valley venture capital and Wall Street shareholders have almost completely turned their backs.

  Shareholders such as KPCB Venture Capital, which invested in Amazon, are now asking Amazon to close warehouses and distribution centers and reduce the size of its staff. At least one-seventh of the scale must be reduced, that is, at least 1,300 employees will be laid off...

Since its listing, Amazon has also experienced crazy expansion. Eight distribution centers have been built, with more than 10,000 employees. Just two or three years ago, Amazon was just a small company stuck in a warehouse. This is the magic of the Internet. , it can make a small company expand to the same level as a giant company that has been around for decades in just a few years. It's straight up.

  Bezos is unwilling to follow the wishes of those Wall Street institutions. After all, it is easy to shut down, but it is not so easy to build it up again, which also disrupts all of Bezos' plans.

This time in San Jose, Bezos came to seek help from Song Yanglai, the second largest shareholder of Amazon. Bezos is still the largest shareholder of Amazon. Bezos has never made a large-scale cash out, and now he still has a 40% stake in Amazon, and he is the largest shareholder out-and-out.

   Song Yang is the second largest shareholder of Amazon. Back then, Song Yang invested in both eBay and Amazon respectively, obtained a controlling stake in eBay, and exchanged a sky-high price of 30 million US dollars for a 35% stake in Amazon.

  Amazon’s several financings have reduced Song Yang’s shareholding to about 31%.

If you add about 7% of Amazon’s equity acquired by the Spark Fund for US$300 million, then Song Yang is still the second largest shareholder of Amazon after Bezos, with a shareholding of about 38%, that is, Song Yang plus Bezos can basically control the entire Amazon board of directors and management, so Bezos needs the support of Song Yang.

   Now, the only supporter Bezos can find is Song Yang, who spent hundreds of millions of dollars to buy Amazon stock.

This is the first time that Bezos has come to the manor of the Bruno Family Club. Bezos, who has not completely let himself go, looked at the manor in front of him, and couldn't help being a little speechless. He had long heard that Song Yang spent a lot of money on this manor. The manor, and a mansion not inferior to Bill Gates' Seattle, are still under construction, and now Bezos has seen it.

Entering the Bruno family manor, Bezos saw many people. Although he had never met them before, Bezos could guess that many of them were big men from America by looking at their clothes, speech, and demeanor. .

Bezos heard that many bigwigs from the Elephant Party and Capitol Hill now like to come to this manor for vacation. Now a membership card of the Bruno Family Club has been fired for more than three million dollars. You have to be invited to be guaranteed by someone to have a chance to get a membership card. Just like this, there are still countless people rushing to squeeze in...

   Bezos took a golf cart and was led by security personnel to a three-story building deep in the club. Song Yang was on the side of the club and basically stayed there.

   "The North American Global Investment Foundation has now acquired more than 6% of ICQ's equity, but we can't buy from the market on a large scale, otherwise I'm afraid it will cause competition!"

In the study, Greck and Marcus were both inside. Marcus reported to Song Yang the status of the acquisition of ICQ's equity, and after playing with Immelt, let ICQ bear the title of junk stock. Marcus, Let the North American Global Investment Foundation also entrust a number of institutions to start buying ICQ stocks.

   But they only dared to make stealthy acquisitions. Even if the acquisitions were scattered, the stock price of ICQ fell all the way, and began to fluctuate. The veterans on Wall Street must be able to see some clues.

"It will take too long to buy all the stocks from the Nasdaq stock market to complete the holding of ICQ, not to mention the difficulty. It is estimated that it will be very difficult to buy more than ten percent of ICQ stocks from the market at most. It’s hard to suppress ICQ’s share price any longer!”

  People on Wall Street are not fools. They will watch Song Yang side by side and keep buying ICQ stock. If they buy too much, ICQ stock price will definitely be pulled up.

  Song Yang also knew that what Marcus said was true, "The most important thing is to get the ICQ equity in the hands of General Electric, Comcast Group and Old Bronfman!"

   "I'm going to let Welch be a lobbyist and let Immelt spit out 30% of ICQ's shares in General Electric's hands. With the current market value of ICQ, it's not too bad to buy back this part of the shares!"

Hearing Song Yang's words, Marcus and Greck couldn't help laughing. Song Yang cashed out several shares during the big merger before. Even if he cashed out 11% of the shares at the beginning, he got 31 billion US dollars. Now, if Song Yang buys 30% of ICQ’s shares in General Electric’s hands, Song Yang can control ICQ again, and the cost is estimated to be no more than 20 billion U.S. dollars. Big pieces of meat will do!

  (end of this chapter)