Following the orders of Huang He to try out the acquisition, Hao Jianguo immediately began working diligently, contacting financial institutions that held Amazon shares.
Hao Jianguo's work was extremely serious because the task was difficult: purchasing 35% of the shares with $8 billion, which equated to a premium of only about 5%. It was highly challenging to acquire such a significant stake at this price.
Of course, Hao Jianguo also understood the significance of Huang He's actions, which was to gauge the market's current assessment and expectations of Amazon, as well as the actual premium during the acquisition.
If they could acquire 35% of the shares at a 5% premium, the overall premium would likely be controlled within 10%. However, if they couldn't, it would mean the premium could eventually exceed 10%, or even 20% or more, making the total price of $25 billion less secure.
Therefore, Hao Jianguo had to complete the task to let their Boss Huang fall completely into this meticulously prepared trap.
With that, Hao Jianguo began to work hard.
Initially, things went quite smoothly. Because Hao Jianguo was willing to acquire at a premium of around 55%, this was definitely good news for a company whose stock price was falling. Many institutions expressed their willingness to sell, and they were soon able to secure intentions to acquire about 15% of the shares.
However, what no one expected was that perhaps due to Hao Jianguo's haste, rumors suddenly spread that someone was eyeing Amazon and intended to acquire the entire company.
As soon as this rumor broke, Hao Jianguo knew the situation was dire. This was because Hao Jianguo's previous contacts with these shareholders were under the guise of being optimistic about Amazon and wanting to invest, without revealing any intention to acquire. Publicly, they were only acquiring some shares for long-term holding and investment.
This was to avoid triggering a collective price hike from the shareholders. But unexpectedly, this news spread, causing Amazon's shareholding institutions to band together and directly set the price at a premium of around 20%.
This price made Hao Jianguo somewhat anxious. He suddenly found himself in a dilemma.
With a 20% premium, they were still unwilling to acquire 35% of the shares for less than $8 billion. Of course, the excess was not much, and Hao Jianguo gritted his teeth, thinking it might not be impossible to acquire at a higher price, and he could explain it to Boss Huang later.
But doing so would clearly indicate their determination to acquire the company, and the premium for acquiring the remaining shares would only become more terrifying.
If he acquired Amazon at a 20% premium, the overall acquisition cost of Amazon would reach nearly $25 billion, which was Huang He's bottom line. But if the premium exceeded 20%, it would exceed Huang He's bottom line. Would Huang He agree to this price?
The situation immediately fell into a stalemate. Hao Jianguo understood that he absolutely could not agree to the shareholders' demands; the premium must be kept within 10%, otherwise Huang He would not engage.
However, the shareholders' attitude was also very firm. Since Jiangnan Group intended to acquire all of Amazon, they had to spend more money, and at least pay over 20% more.
Moreover, this price kept increasing. In large acquisitions, buying at a 50% premium was common, so what was wrong with demanding a 20% premium?
Just as the situation was at a standstill with neither side willing to budge, another piece of bad news arrived: Bezos, the chairman of Amazon, had learned of someone's intention to acquire Amazon. Naturally, he would not accept such terms.
However, Bezos did not foolishly fall out with the shareholders. Instead, he leaked information that Amazon's profits in 2005 were very promising and that its stock price was about to surge.
Upon hearing this news, the shareholders lost all interest in negotiating with Hao Jianguo. At that moment, Hao Jianguo completely lost the possibility of completing his mission.
Helpless, Hao Jianguo had no choice but to find the old man and his Goldman Sachs again, reporting the entire situation truthfully.
"Stupid!" After the report, Hao Jianguo was thoroughly reprimanded. The old man angrily denounced Hao Jianguo's stupidity, "20% is 20%. Couldn't you just spend all $8 billion first and convert it into Amazon shares? If you did that, do you think Huang He would still rush into it even if you hadn't completed anything?"
"Yes, but if I did that, Huang He would have me eaten alive!" Hao Jianguo muttered inwardly, but he put on a show of extreme regret, constantly saying he was useless and indeed foolish.
"There's no other way. For now, I have to step in!" the old man sighed. He was very reluctant to intervene, but seeing Huang He on the verge of falling into the trap, he felt extremely uneasy if he didn't give him a push.
Thus, that evening, the old man made several phone calls, and then a change occurred.
The next day, news suddenly came from US government departments that the US tax authorities were considering tax investigations into e-commerce and methods for reasonable taxation. A detailed charter would be drafted within the next three months.
This was very normal news because, in the United States, you could owe money to the White House or even the US military, but you absolutely could not owe money to the IRS.
This was because even if you owed a lot of money to the military and the White House, they couldn't send armed forces to arrest you; it wouldn't be in accordance with laws and regulations. But if you owed the IRS, you could dig your own grave, because the IRS could arrest you at any time... In the United States, the IRS has its own enforcement powers and punitive rights. Many things that other laws couldn't accomplish, the IRS could do, and it was perfectly legal.
And the US IRS is a department that promotes based on tax revenue. Their sole objective is to collect taxes, and they do not let go of any target that can be taxed.
Recently, the IRS had its sights set on e-commerce.
Although the IRS had long established relevant tax collection rules for e-commerce, these rules were aimed at sellers on the platform, making tax collection very difficult. After all, people on the internet are anonymous, and the IRS couldn't possibly verify the identity of each seller one by one and go to their door to collect taxes!
After all, an individual seller might only have less than $10 in transactions per month, and the tax collected would not exceed one dollar. However, the cost of a tax officer's visit would exceed $100, which was definitely not a cost-effective transaction.
Therefore, even though the US IRS had long established relevant rules, they had never seriously implemented them, and the vast majority of e-commerce sellers never paid taxes.
But this time, it was said that with the continuous expansion of e-commerce transaction volume, the IRS leadership had decided to formulate more comprehensive tax collection methods, ensuring that all electronic transactions would be monitored and every transaction would be taxed.
Although this news only came from some related individuals, and there were no formal documents from the government stating that new tax methods would be formulated, it was completely unclear how these new methods would be used for tax collection. It was merely a vague rumor, and theoretically, it shouldn't have had much impact.
However, as soon as this news was released, the stock prices of all e-commerce platforms in the market began to plummet. This was also normal, as once taxes started to be levied, buyers would have to pay more, which would definitely dampen buyers' enthusiasm for shopping and lead to a decrease in sales for major e-commerce platforms, causing stock prices to fall accordingly.
On this day, Amazon's stock price fell sharply, with its total market value dropping directly to $20.1 billion, almost returning to the $10 billion range.
As this news spread, the institutions that had previously been at odds with Hao Jianguo panicked. They began to negotiate with Hao Jianguo, demanding to trade at a 10% premium.
Hao Jianguo agreed to this but stipulated that the premium should be calculated based on the price at the time of signing the contract. At this moment, Amazon's total market value had fallen to only $20 billion. A 10% premium on this would only bring it back to the previous $21 billion price.
This naturally displeased these institutions, who demanded a 10% premium based on the original price. After a lengthy battle of wits, Hao Jianguo agreed to increase the premium to 15% but insisted on calculating it based on the current price, not the original price.
Faced with this demand, these institutions had no choice but to agree. Finally, Hao Jianguo successfully acquired 35.21% of Amazon's shares for Jiangnan Group within the agreed timeframe, costing around $7.8 billion, thus completing his mission in a rather perfect manner.
Then, he handed over this achievement report to Huang He.
Huang He looked at the acquisition documents in his hand and finally made a firm decision. He told Hao Jianguo to immediately start finding ways to contact financial institutions as intermediaries to help Jiangnan Group borrow money from the Western Mustang Fund's account, meaning borrowing money from himself to himself, to raise the remaining $15 billion in acquisition funds and thus completely acquire Amazon Group.
This financial acquisition battle, later known as the Battle of Amazon, had officially begun.
And the first part of the entire war was to find a trustworthy intermediary to help Jiangnan Group avoid legal risks.
Hao Jianguo had already completed the relevant intelligence gathering work, listing more than ten trustworthy financial institutions for Huang He to choose from.
"Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs would do such things?" Boss Huang asked with some surprise upon seeing these two famous names on the list.
"Yes, Boss. Don't let these two companies be international conglomerates and leaders of investment banks, even being called the behind-the-scenes financial presidents. In fact, these two companies are dirtier than anyone else. If they were to be sentenced, 1,000 years in prison wouldn't be enough," Hao Jianguo said indignantly.