Hollywood Hunter

Unlike the common leveraged buyouts in the 1980s, Cersei Capital bought LTD, not intending to split and sell it quickly for cash, but prefer to conduct a secondary listing after long-term operations.

Therefore, it is impossible for Cersei Capital to adopt the short-term high-interest rate lending and junk bond financing models that were common in the 1980s.

In order to obtain the funds required for the acquisition of LTD, Cersei Capital was already preparing to issue a fund dedicated to this acquisition before the formal acquisition began.

After the transaction was officially concluded, Cersei Capital also basically completed the fund-raising work for this fund.

The acquisition of more than US$2 billion is far from comparable to the acquisition of Reynolds Nabisco, which has a total transaction value of US$33 billion. However, in the context that the United States has not completely emerged from the aftermath of the bond market collapse a few years ago, this This acquisition is the largest private equity acquisition in the past two years.

In order to give investors confidence, and for investment considerations in the Westeros system itself, Westeros announced soon after the transaction was concluded that it would purchase 10% of the shares of LTD at the agreed price, minus the Wexner family The other 10% of shares held by Cersei Capital actually bought only 80% of the shares of LTD. The amount of funds to be paid is 1.96 billion US dollars.

The addition of Westeros has enabled investors who had only signed an intent subscription agreement to quickly fulfill their fund subscription shares, thus ensuring the smooth completion of the acquisition.

The specific acquisition process will take two months to complete, but Simon quickly got in touch with the founder of LTD, Leslie Wexner.

Leslie Wexner’s family history is very typical in this industry.

The first fashion store started, and the chain continued to increase in the following two decades, eventually becoming the current LTD company.

Among them, the Victoria's Secret that Simon is most concerned about is actually the lingerie chain brand Leslie Wexner bought from another businessman in 1982.

Because it was not the root of the beginning, although Victoria’s Secret has developed very rapidly in recent years, when it comes to LTD, everyone will only think of Victoria’s Secret, but in fact, Leslie Wexner still considers the women under the LTD. Sub-brands such as fashion and sports fashion are the core of the business.

Therefore, compared with the latter, a Victoria's Secret brand accounted for more than 60% of the parent company's sales. At this time, Victoria's Secret accounted for only 20% of the company's sales share in 1991.

The economic downturn, over-expansion, abandoning the original ‘Limited Brands’ business strategy and unrestrained pursuit of more areas eventually caused LTD to fall into operating difficulties after the collapse of the US bond market.

Speaking of which, Leslie Wexner, the founder of LTD, is a businessman with a very radical style, which is very similar to Simon's impression of the outside world.

The Westeros system has risen rapidly like a miracle in just six years. Simon's various large-scale adventures in this process can't even be described as simply radical.

However, Simon, who has lived for two lives, has always been very clear about what he is doing.

Westeros has many unreasonable layouts in the eyes of outsiders, such as the crazy investment in Eaglet in the past two years. For Simon, it is just taking advantage of some destined to explode industries in advance.

Leslie Wexner obviously does not have the ‘advantage’ of Simon. The continuous expansion of the LTD in the past two decades has been more of a natural move by a businessman who is daring to take risks.

The fashion field is already a very competitive Red Sea market.

The continuous expansion of LTD has inevitably fallen into a homogenization problem that many fashion companies cannot avoid: after all, it is difficult for the fashion industry to play too many tricks.

The homogeneity of clothing products is serious, the scale of the company is too bloated, and the relative cost increases, which inevitably leads to a decline in brand competitiveness.

Therefore, sales of women's clothing brands and sports fashion brands under LTD have seen a significant decline in sales in recent years due to the economic downturn in the United States.

The only thing that went up against the trend was Victoria's Secret, who focused on underwear.

Simon privately wondered if this is the legendary ‘lipstick effect’.

However, the original space-time LTD company began to turn more attention to the operation of Victoria's Secret in the 1990s, and returned to the ‘limited brand’ business strategy of focusing on core brands, which was probably inspired by the market performance of Victoria’s Secret in the early 1990s.

LTD is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio.

Ohio is located in the northeastern part of the United States, bordering Pennsylvania to the east and the Great Lakes to the north. Unlike the winding and mountainous western states and counties, Ohio is located in the endless eastern plains. As the capital of Ohio, Columbus is located right in the center of this plain.

After Simon and Janet returned from Australia, they soon accepted Leslie Wexner’s invitation to come to Columbus, Ohio as a guest.

Of course, there are other reasons.

Simon's ‘butterfly effect’ on this world became more and more obvious, but it did not change the occurrence of things.

For example, the Los Angeles riot at the end of April 1992.

The cause of the incident was that in March 1991, Rodney King, a black young man, was assaulted by Los Angeles police officers for drunk driving arrests and other acts. The incident was filmed by passers-by and sold to television stations. As a result, the majors who were accustomed to'making topics' The TV station edited the first half of the tape, leaving only the shot of Rodney King being played.

On April 28, the Los Angeles District Court ruled that the four police officers involved were not guilty and released based on the complete record of the incident, which caused dissatisfaction among the black community, which in turn led to large-scale riots.

Although the riots in my memory only occurred in south-central Los Angeles, who knows if there will be any abnormal changes this time.

As soon as the incident happened, Simon quietly left Los Angeles, and joined Janet from New York in Columbus.

For habitual reasons, in Columbus, a farm-style estate covering an area of ​​50 acres has already been set up in advance.

Unlike Los Angeles and some other large cities along the coast, Columbus, which is located in the Central Plains, is very peaceful. This is actually well understood. Located in the conservative northeastern United States, the proportion of colored people in Ohio is much lower than in the east and west coast states, and the proportion of whites is still above 90%.

Simon didn't feel much about the riots, and it was not the first time this happened in this country.

In the farm estate in the northern suburbs of Columbus, Leslie Wexner also didn't mean to talk about this sensitive incident.

For politicians, this matter is wrong no matter which side it is biased. Therefore, President Bush only came forward two days after the riots broke out, and made a few unpleasant appeals. It was the election year, and all the candidates were surprisingly silent about this riot, and they were all votes.

Simon and Leslie Wexner are both public figures. Even if they don't have the scruples of politicians, they will only be wrong if they say more.

Although it is clear that a country's move towards a certain extreme of political correctness is often the result of this constant silence and concession, Simon did not mean to change anything at all.

For this world, he has always positioned himself as a passer-by.

I can't talk about politics, but of course business.

Today is May 1st, unknowingly it is the end of spring and the beginning of summer.

Strolling along the busy farm lanes, ignoring the disturbances from the outside world, unconsciously seems very comfortable.

In the past few days in Columbus, Simon has been constantly discussing the next development of LTD by Leslie Wexner.

The difficulties of LTD in recent years have proved that this company must make changes.

In the original time and space, LTD abandoned many surrounding brands to focus on the operation of Victoria's Secret, which is the result of this change.

However, combining the information in his memory, Simon found that LTD could actually make another attempt.

Now that it has proved very successful, the promotion of the Victoria's Secret brand through the **** marketing method of Victoria's Secret Angels must of course be retained. However, Simon also proposed to Leslie Wexner for the business of LTD’s women’s fashion and sports fashion. Another kind of'fast fashion' concept that has been gradually taking shape in recent years but has not grown.

Many years later, the most famous cheap fashion brands in the world, Zara, H&M and GAP, all adopted the ‘fast fashion’ mode of operation.

To put it simply, fast fashion is a model that quickly promotes the fashion trends shown in major fashion weeks in relatively cheap consumer areas in a very short period of time.

First-class design, second-rate brand, third-rate price, this is a very vivid summary of fast fashion brands.

Frankly speaking, the so-called fast fashion is actually a rapid copying and imitation of fashion trends made by major top luxury brands.

In Simon's memory, the Zara brand pays tens of millions of euros in infringement fees every year for plagiarizing the designs of top luxury brands, and is prosecuted once every three days. However, this company has never meant to change its business strategy. Compared with the huge profits, the annual infringement costs of tens of millions of euros are really not worth mentioning.

Zara’s boss, Spanish businessman Amancio Ortega, once squeezed out Warren Buffett with this world-class fashion brand, and made it into the top three ranks of the global rich list with tens of billions of dollars.

Whether it is Zara in Spain, H&M in Sweden or GAP in the United States, the three major fashion giants have been established many years later, but the three companies are still a long way from their peak. LTD already has a deep foundation in the fashion field. At this time, it is not too late to make advance arrangements before the three giants have completely risen.

The development of cheap fashion chains to a certain extent, the further breakthrough of the brand has been a problem that has plagued Leslie Wexner for a long time.

Unlike luxury brands, cheap fashion is too easy to homogenize, and it is difficult to make your own brand and characteristics.

The concept of ‘fast fashion’ put forward by Simon in recent days has given Leslie Wexner a feeling of sudden enlightenment.

As for the business moral hazards such as plagiarism and imitation that may be involved, there is no psychological burden for a businessman who has been in the mall for decades.

After several days of discussion, Leslie Wexner also accepted Simon's suggestion.

In the next step, while focusing on the promotion of the Victoria's Secret brand, LTD also plans to integrate its fashion business and build a fast fashion brand using the foundation of a brand called ‘Express’ first established by LTD.

In addition, LTD will also sell part of its non-core business. This sale is certainly not the kind of sale after the leveraged buyout in the 1980s. All the funds obtained from the sale of assets will be used to develop the two brands of ‘VS’ and ‘Express’.

"Simon, with regard to the idea of ​​the lingerie fashion show you mentioned yesterday, I seriously considered it last night. This is a very good idea. However, according to your idea, invite a group of top models in the fashion industry. To broadcast on TV, the budget seems too high, maybe we can just start a little simpler."

"I've considered the budget issue," Simon smiled and said, "Les, it's better to be like this. This big show is jointly produced by Daenerys Entertainment and LTD. Both parties share 50% of the budget. Dan Nilith Entertainment is responsible for the distribution of channels such as TV platforms and video tapes."

Strolling among the green farm roads, the scenery is pleasant, but people are not drunk.

Leslie Wexner quickly calculated.

Simon has learned about the LTD and Leslie Wexner. Similarly, Wexner has studied the development of this young man more carefully.

Daenerys Entertainment can sell a Gucci brand documentary at the box office of tens of millions of dollars, and make Madonna's concert documentary a big box office. Then, it is difficult to say whether this fashion show will have the same value.

"So, Simon, we share the budget, and the profits should also be shared?"

Simon glanced at the middle-aged man in his fifties, and said: "Les, LTD can get a large promotion of the Victoria's Secret brand with only half of the budget, isn't that enough?"

"But, after all, we have assumed half of the budget."

Leslie Wexner hesitated, but still did not agree that LTD could afford the entire production budget.

Because, according to the imagination of the young man next to him, such a big show would be impossible to get without tens of millions of dollars.

It is a bit risky to invest tens of millions of dollars for a fashion brand show.

Moreover, this also requires Simon to be responsible for the planning, even if it is to invite the top supermodels, it also needs Simon Westero's contacts.

Although Victoria's Secret has a very good performance, it is only a cheap underwear brand after all.

For many supermodels, catwalks for such a brand are a little priceless. If it is still with other supermodels, it will be even more priceless. However, if it is a show for Simon Westeros, it will probably be more acceptable.

Leslie Wexner still knows the two'waist spirits' and'leg ​​spirits' who suddenly emerged in the fashion circle last year.

Westeros created two supermodels just once.