Debuted right after graduating from high school

Similar to the assessment made a few years ago, since the 2008 financial crisis, the global economy has entered another upward phase, and overall development has been relatively stable with no major risks.

The problem that Fan Wumian needs to deal with is nothing more than making various subtle adjustments to ensure that the companies under his command perform at their best, thereby seizing market share in one opportunity after another and continuously consolidating his own foundation.

He himself is certainly not worried about anything in this life, and he also has the resources to consider the long-term interests of his descendants, such as acquiring or investing in antiques, wineries, hotels, islands, commercial real estate, hydropower stations, wind farms, etc. In fact, there are not much returns in the short term, but the main reason behind it is to "pass on wealth".

However, Fan Wumian was quite troubled by the fact that his illegitimate children hardly interacted with each other and probably wouldn't get close to each other when they grew up, worrying that things might get chaotic one day.

However, many things in the world cannot be as one wishes. Since one is busy flirting and seeking pleasure everywhere, many problems arising from this are unavoidable.

Thinking that his children and grandchildren would have their own blessings, Fan Wumian rarely worried unnecessarily. From another perspective, those little guys had made no contributions and had never suffered any hardships, yet they were born into his family and benefited from his wealth, receiving a huge sum of money from him for free. This was already more than enough to repay his children.

If you were like Fan Wumian, growing up with a foolish and unreliable father like Old Fan, or if he not only didn't support you but also drained your positive emotions and income like a "black hole," then that would truly be a catastrophe.

Countless people toil day and night their entire lives just to earn money to live. Fan Wumian has already solved all the material problems for his children; the rest they can only rely on themselves.

The reason for considering these things was that in May 2013, Fan Wumian encountered another high-quality project suitable for wealth inheritance. Rumors circulated that Blackstone Group was selling the high-end hotel brand Hilton, the same Hilton that Paris Hilton's family once owned.

When Fan Wumian learned the news, he was vacationing in the Rhine Valley of Germany, inspecting wineries and local castle hotels for sale. He casually sent someone to check the information and discovered that Blackstone Group had lost everything in this transaction.

Back in 2007, for reasons unknown, Blackstone Group's management acquired Hilton Hotels for a staggering $260 billion. After the financial crisis hit in 2008, Hilton Hotels' value plummeted by 70%, but Blackstone Group still carried over $200 billion in debt.

Later, through a series of capital operations, some creditors became shareholders by contributing their debt as equity, and the valuation of Hilton Hotels Group also recovered. The company continued to reinvest its profits to expand its scale.

Since 2010, Blackstone Group has publicly announced two additional funding rounds of $8 million and $15 billion to reduce debt and renovate some hotels. Last year, it was busy trying to take Hilton Hotels public, but the market generally did not have a positive outlook on the company's prospects.

Blackstone Group changed its CEO this year, presumably wanting to shed its burdens and move forward with a lighter load, and suddenly decided to try to sell the Hilton Hotel Group.

This hotel group owns 10 hotel brands, 3800 hotels worldwide, and more than 63 rooms. It can contribute more than a billion dollars in gross profit every year. Unfortunately, the debt burden is too heavy, and even if it makes money, it still has to pay interest to creditors.

Even Fan Wumian had never managed an acquisition of this scale.

While staying in a castle on the banks of the Rhine River in Germany, I carefully reviewed the data and calculated that Hilton Hotels Group currently has a total debt of approximately $137 billion and a market valuation of $120 billion, which means the company's total value is around $257 billion, roughly the same as the acquisition price paid by Blackstone Group in 2007.

However, since 2007, Hilton Hotels & Resorts' profits have covered the shortfall, and Blackstone Group has invested an additional three to four billion US dollars to stabilize the company. Selling it for 257 billion US dollars would obviously be a loss.

Fan Wumian guessed that Blackstone Group was eager to sell because it had found a new project with better potential, but he didn't care about those things. He was only busy calculating whether he could make a high enough return if he invested $120 billion and took on $137 billion in foreign debt, for a total of about $260 billion, to acquire Hilton Hotels Group.

In recent years, Fan Wumian has been relatively restrained. Even though the value of his assets has soared, he has not taken out loans to acquire assets everywhere. This is mainly because he already has a lot of high-quality assets. If he tries to take food from other people's bowls, he will be in trouble. Others will not allow him to expand further across industries.

Acquiring traditional businesses like Hilton Hotels Group is not a big problem, since this market is already controlled by Hilton Hotels Group. It's just a matter of changing the controlling shareholder, which will not seriously impact the interests of others.

Fan Wumian calculated that he would invest $5 billion himself, and the remaining $20 billion would be paid through loans, insurance and fund companies. In theory, he would only have to pay $5 billion. If he could increase the value of the Hilton Hotel Group to $30 billion or $40 billion, he could earn over $10 billion.

Given Hilton's profitability, as long as it controls its debt and further increases revenue, it wouldn't be difficult for it to increase its overall value by tens of billions of dollars under his leadership. This could be achieved by attracting customers from the Asian region, restructuring and splitting up to reduce expenses, and raising funds through an IPO to reduce debt.

Asset management companies like Blackstone Group are constrained in their decision-making, needing to weigh the short-term impact on other businesses and corporate image, and may not dare to make rash moves. They also lack a clear judgment on the economic outlook.

Fan Wumian, however, knew that the US stock market would experience a very long bull market until the pandemic hit, impacting the hotel industry. During this period, the US housing market would be able to develop steadily for five or six years, and the US housing market would also rise steadily.

So after a quick calculation, Fan Wumian realized that there was no pressure on him, and that relying on bank funding would not affect his other businesses. Without hesitation, he instructed the family office to officially begin research and try to contact Blackstone Group to understand the specific situation.

Soon after, news broke that Blackstone Group was trying to contact Nokia in hopes of acquiring Nokia's devices and services division and patent licensing, and was also attempting to acquire Motorola to create a "patent barrier."

If Blackstone Group succeeds, mobile phone and telecommunications companies around the world will have to obediently pay huge patent fees to Blackstone Group in the future, which explains why the company is in a hurry to sell Hilton Hotels Group.

As more and more assessment reports were compiled and delivered to Fan Wumian, he realized that the Hilton Hotel Group itself was in good operating condition, and the problems lay only in "how to expand the customer base" and "reducing debt pressure".

The former, Fan Wumian, can handle it through his influence and the internet companies he controls. The latter is not a big problem either. The overall interest rate in Hong Kong is at a historical low, which is about 3% per annum. That is to say, if the loan is $200 billion, the annual interest cost will be around $6 million.

Given Hilton's profitability, its annual net profit could increase significantly from the current $400-500 million to over $1 billion.

In recent years, in order to reduce its debt, Blackstone Group agreed to many demands from its creditors, resulting in a very high debt cost that did not decrease significantly with interest rate cuts. This time, its decision to sell itself off may well be driven by the desire to get rid of the "leech" mentality.

With more and more funds accumulating and nowhere to invest, Fan Wumian was confident that he could pay off all of Hilton Hotel Group's external debt within a few years. Once that was done, Hilton Hotel Group would be contributing tens or hundreds of billions of dollars in cash annually, becoming a veritable money-printing machine. Whether held long-term or sold off, it would be a good investment. Compared to short-term gains, Fan Wumian valued the hotel's long-term profitability even more, making it ideal for placement in his family foundation.

While the low-interest loan window in Hong Kong was still open, he seized the opportunity to formally negotiate with Blackstone Group. When he sent people to learn about the specific asset details, Fan Wumian discovered that as early as the end of 2008, Blackstone Group had acquired Royal Caribbean Cruises through Hilton, paid $15 billion in cash to privatize and delist it, and assumed $80 billion in debt.

Presumably for the sake of going public, this part of the debt was not widely disclosed. After learning about the situation, Fan Wumian was both amused and exasperated, but still insisted on continuing the negotiations.

One party genuinely wanted to buy, and the other genuinely wanted to sell. Before the end of the month, they signed a memorandum of understanding and applied for loans from institutions such as the Bank of China and Standard Chartered Bank in Hong Kong, fixing a lower loan interest rate in advance. In reality, no formal acquisition agreement had been reached yet.

The acquisition involved sampling thousands of hotels, and Fan Wumian also personally visited Budapest, London and other places. After several third-party auditing firms and investment banks confirmed that there were no problems, the acquisition was not officially completed until the end of August.

The company suddenly had a massive bank loan of approximately $330 billion, but the combined assets of Hilton Hotels and Royal Caribbean Cruises totaled around $355 billion.

For long-term development, Fan Wumian immediately began to restructure the Hilton Hotel Group. Following the advice of consulting firms, he split it into three segments: a "hotel brand management group" with light asset operations, a "real estate investment trust" holding real estate and other assets, and a "timeshare company".

At the same time as the acquisition, Hilton Hotels Group quietly changed its registered location to Macau, one of the tax havens. Macau does not levy income tax on non-local profits and even allocated a piece of land to Fan Wumian for free to build its global headquarters building. The tax rate was reduced by more than ten percentage points, all of which were retained profits.

Hoping to recoup some losses and celebrate the acquisition of Hilton Hotels Group, Fan Wumian also announced that all of his hotels and cruise ships would be offered at a 9% discount for the next 90 days, successfully causing revenue to surge in a short period of time.

Busy with this big project, Fan Wumian put in a lot of effort, which was a good way to kill some extra time and energy. At the end of September, he even took a cruise ship from Shanghai to the island nation to preside over the opening ceremony of a new hotel.

Because Fan Wumian had abundant funds and enhanced Hilton's brand influence, the company achieved success in some restructuring and marketing strategies. Several mainstream valuation agencies unanimously raised their valuations of Hilton Hotels Group.

This increase in paper wealth was more than the actual cash Fan Wumian had spent during the acquisition. The actual amount was impossible to calculate, but theoretically it earned him approximately $30 billion.

Blackstone Group didn't lose out either. After successfully acquiring Nokia and Motorola's patent portfolio, it immediately launched lawsuits everywhere demanding patent fees. It also acquired BlackBerry, announced its entry into the Android camp, and relentlessly pressured Japanese and Korean mobile phone manufacturers, clearly playing a long game.

November 2013.

Fan Wumian is in Lin'an, living in the Greentown Peach Blossom Garden, a Chinese-style garden next to Jack Ma's house.

Shortly after waking up in the morning, he received Hilton Hotels & Resorts' third-quarter financial report, which showed a net profit of approximately $3.42 million and $19.1 billion in cash on hand.

Yang Mi, who is currently filming a period drama in Hengdian, was so tired last night that she fell asleep without removing her makeup. She was wearing a slip dress and, while wiping her face, came to his side. Looking at the numbers displayed on the screen, she said with concern:

"There are rumors online that you acquired Hilton Hotels with no investment and owed banks more than 200 billion RMB. Is that really okay?"

Two days ago, upon learning that Fan Wumian had come to Lin'an, Guli Nazha, who was also filming in Hengdian, took the initiative to travel for more than two hours to Lin'an to visit him and offer her some warmth.

After staying at this traditional Chinese garden mansion for two days, Guli Nazha got a bruise on her knee.

Yang Mi arrived here just a few hours after she left.

Because she hadn't tidied up properly beforehand, Yang Mi had just found a pair of tattered black stockings in the bathroom trash can, but she was pretending not to know anything about them.

They weren't in a formal romantic relationship to begin with, and there were no promises between them. Yang Mi had already heard some rumors circulating within the company and knew he was a womanizer. She just looked at Fan Wumian with a strange expression, wondering which vixen had come by.

Out of consideration for their relationship, Yang Mi saw through it but didn't say anything. Fan Wumian, completely oblivious to these subtle details, simply smiled and replied:
"What problems could there be? My insurance company, asset management company, and entertainment company can all contribute a lot of cash. If all else fails, I can sell some stocks to raise cash. With ample collateral, the bank won't withdraw my loan. Besides, this hotel group itself has a considerable total profit."

"I'm considering using some idle funds, taking $1 billion out of the books to manage Hilton's hotel group. If we can make back $10-20 billion, it will be even easier. With interest rates lower, the repayment speed will be faster."

"However, good projects with the potential for rapid growth in the short term are becoming increasingly difficult to find. The US stock market has seen particularly strong gains this year, and it seems that only unicorn internet companies that are raising funds meet my needs. I'm preparing to invest in ride-hailing apps, social media, and ticketing in Silicon Valley."

Yang Mi's mind was still preoccupied with the stockings, marveling at Fan Wumian's many tricks, but she was saying aloud:

"That's right. Since you dared to take action, you must be confident. Have you thought about what will happen in the future?"

Fan Wumian decisively said:

"Life is pretty much set in stone, so we just have to make do and move on. We can't exactly expect to live forever, or suddenly achieve a technological breakthrough and enter the age of interstellar travel." (End of Chapter)