deltrittennovels Chapter 412 Failed Interception
Chapter 412 Failed Interception
Ling Yun sat in his office, with Xingchen Technology's latest equity structure chart in front of him.
HP holds 16.68% of the shares, Goldman Sachs 15.56%, Morgan Stanley 14.28%, Dell 13.8%, employees 10.88%, Abu Dhabi 7.6%, France 7.6%, and the remaining 13.4% are all outstanding shares.
Fiona called half an hour ago with some unexpected news. The Fantasy Group hadn't given up despite Spark's attempt to steal the deal. They changed their strategy and directly approached Star Technology's employee stock ownership platform.
The employee stock ownership platform holds 10.88% of the shares. These shares are held by dozens of long-time employees, all of whom were there to build the company from the ground up with Lingyun. Yixiang representatives approached them one by one, offering hard-to-refuse terms—not a purchase, but a "cooperation." Yixiang would provide a sum of money, and the employees would pledge their shares to Yixiang, entrusting their voting rights to Yixiang. The shares would still belong to the employees; only control would transfer to Yixiang.
More importantly, Yixiang hadn't given up on Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley either. They approached Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley with a proposal: not to buy shares, but to sign a concerted action agreement. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley would delegate their voting rights to Yixiang, and Yixiang would sign a performance-based agreement with them. Lingyun hadn't yet received specific details about the agreement. In this way, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley wouldn't have to sell shares, and Yixiang wouldn't have to spend a lot of money, but control would be in Yixiang's hands.
"Did they sign it?" Lingyun asked.
"They've signed," Fiona said in a low voice. "Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have both signed. On the employee stock ownership platform, more than half of the employees have already signed the pledge entrustment agreement."
Ling Yun calculated that Yixiang, through its concerted action agreement, controlled the voting rights of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. Combined with the voting rights delegated by the employee stock ownership platform, its total voting rights exceeded 35%. HP and Dell were both swayed by Yixiang's acquisition plan, agreeing to a share swap—exchanging Yixiang's shares for their shares in Xingchen Technology. This would give Dell and HP over 40% of Yixiang Group's shares. With Abu Dhabi and the French investment bank not taking sides, the remaining shares were scattered among retail investors, making concentration difficult.
The unconventional approach won.
It wasn't through technology, products, or the market. It was through money and capital operations. They acquired control of Xingchen Technology at minimal cost.
Ling Yun leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. He remembered 1997, sitting in that small office at Star Technology, writing code until the early hours of the morning. He remembered Eric, David, and those all-nighters. He remembered the first time the Star System booted up, the blue starry sky, the white shooting stars. He remembered the day the Nasdaq bell rang, the opening price of $57, and Anderson hugging him, his face flushed.
Now, StarCraft is becoming a fantasy. A company claiming to be a "national enterprise" is actually controlled by two American companies. Ironic? No, that's business. Business has no nationality, only profit. Fantasy wants StarCraft not for its technology, but for its brand, distribution channels, and patents. They want to use the StarCraft brand to sell their own computers. They want to completely transform the StarCraft system into Fantasy's "autonomous operating system." They want to use StarCraft's patents to negotiate with Microsoft, with Intel, and with everyone else.
Ling Yun picked up the phone and dialed Fiona's number.
"Don't bother with such fanciful ideas anymore. Let them have them."
Fiona was silent for a few seconds. "Mr. Ling, are we just going to let it go like this?"
"What good will it do to just give up? They've gained control, and we can't win. But we still have StarCraft's technology, code, and community. All they've got is a brand, but brands can be changed, channels can be built, and patents can be circumvented. They can't take away the truly valuable things."
There was a few seconds of silence on the other end of the phone. "Understood."
Ling Yun hung up the phone. He stood up and walked to the window. Outside, it was springtime in Jinan; the plane trees were beginning to bud, their tender green leaves shimmering in the sunlight.
He stood there, watching for a long time. Then he picked up his phone and sent Li Mo a text message: "The matter of Xingchen is settled. From now on, the Xinghuo System must be accelerated. What Xingchen has lost, we will take back with our own hands."
Li Mo's phone vibrated, and he replied with a single word: "Okay."
Ling Yun put down his phone. He knew this battle wasn't over yet. Yixiang had acquired the empty shell of Xingchen, but they didn't know that the real Xingchen—the code, the community, the trust of the developers—was no longer in that building. They were on Xinghuo's servers, in the code repositories of the open-source community, and on the computers of hundreds of thousands of developers across China.
A wild idea can buy a name, but it can't buy an ecosystem.
What Lingyun wants to do is to let the ecosystem of Spark grow into a towering tree that Yixiang can never catch up with.