I Become A Noble in England

In 1971, John Smith's father, Julian Sinclair Smith, acquired WBFF-TV, a local TV station in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. After continuous development, the Smith family established the Sinclair Broadcast Group in 1986.

However, Julian's health later became poor. In the 1990s, Julian's eldest son David Smith became the CEO of the group and began rapid expansion.

In 1995, Sinclair Group already owned 13 TV stations. In order to expand rapidly, David Smith decided to take the company public.

In the same year, the group acquired five more TV stations at once.

To date, Sinclair Group has owned more than 100 local TV stations across the United States, becoming one of the largest television operators in the United States.

From this process, we can find that David Smith is very important in the development of Sinclair Group. That is why Barron told John Smith that it is very difficult to overthrow David Smith's "rule" over Sinclair Group.

Although the Sinclair family, including David Smith, is usually very low-key, he is very aggressive in running the company.

During the past 10 years, Sinclair Group has grown from owning a dozen TV stations to its current size of over 100 TV stations through mergers and acquisitions.

The consequence of this is naturally that the company has incurred a large amount of debt.

John also told Barron's that in the early days of Sinclair Group, especially after its listing, such an aggressive strategy did bring development to the company, but after accumulating so much debt, he would rather stabilize it, adjust the company's financial structure, and then proceed to the next step of expansion.

In addition, John Smith and his elder brother also had differences on the future development direction of the company.

John Smith believes that with the current trend, young people are spending less and less time watching TV. He believes that the Internet is about to change the tradition of the media industry and that the Sinclair Group should increase its attempts in the Internet industry in the future.

Therefore, he once proposed to acquire some media websites with potential, but David Smith disagreed and directly rejected John's proposal. Instead, he planned to spend a lot of money to continue acquiring TV stations...

Of course, this kind of thing has happened before. What led John Smith to decide to launch a "rebellion" was last week, when their father Julian Sinclair Smith suddenly suffered a stroke and was hospitalized. Even after rescue, he never woke up again...

You know, Julian had six children in total, five sons and one daughter.

The first three children were born to Julian's ex-wife, while John Smith and his four brothers and sisters were all born to Julian's current wife...

Relatively speaking, these six children can easily be divided into two camps emotionally.

If it was before, although his father Julian had always served as the chairman of the group, David Smith had been in the position of CEO for more than ten years, and his control over the company was completely beyond the reach of John Smith and the other "current three siblings."

Even in the affairs within the group, David Smith and his "three brothers from the ex-wife" have been intentionally or unintentionally denying and suppressing the "three current siblings", and they can only endure it.

But the current situation does not allow them to hesitate any longer. Given the situation of their father Julian, it is unknown when he will pass away - David Smith is now acting as the chairman - if that happens, the other party's "three brothers from the ex-wife" will inevitably slowly squeeze John Smith and others out of the Sinclair Group.

And John Smith is not without supporters among the board of directors and major shareholders.

After all, SEM Group can be said to be the most successful investment of Sinclair Group in recent years, and Sinclair Group has reaped huge profits.

This investment was initially proposed and led by John Smith.

Therefore, based on this achievement, his ability has been recognized by some people.

Moreover, John Smith's idea of ​​expanding investment into the Internet industry also has supporters among the board of directors and shareholders.

In addition, although the Sinclair Group has been continuously acquiring and expanding under the leadership of David Smith, it has also accumulated a lot of debts and has not had time to digest them...

This has also led to the fact that Sinclair Group's stock price has not seen much increase over the years.

This strategy of continuous expansion inevitably causes some shareholders to have doubts.

Here we need to explain the current shareholding situation of Sinclair Group. It can be said that since its listing, due to continuous acquisitions, Sinclair Group has been continuously introducing investors, but their family has also not relaxed the repurchase of stocks.

Therefore, up to now, the Sinclair family's shareholding in the group still exceeds 43%, and it can be said that its control over the shares is still very solid.

The Sinclair Family Trust owns approximately 25% of the Sinclair Group's shares, and the remaining six children each hold approximately 3% of the Sinclair Group's shares.

In terms of shareholding ratio, the "three brothers from the ex-wife" and the "three current siblings" are basically the same.

The key lies in the 25% stake owned by the family trust...

According to the regulations, the trust fund holds 7 votes in total for the voting rights of the stocks. If their father Julian dies, then his current wife, John Smith's mother, will only have the beneficiary rights of the family trust and no voting rights. The six brothers and sisters will each have one vote. The key point is that at that time, their father Julian's voting rights will be transferred to the eldest son David Smith...

This means that David Smith will have two votes, and the "three brothers from the ex-wife" will control the holdings of the family trust with a voting ratio of 4:3 to the "three current siblings."

This decision is understandable. After all, as the eldest son of the Sinclair family, David Smith has served as CEO since before the group went public, and is naturally more trusted by his father Julian.

Therefore, when the other party controlled 25% of the Sinclair Group's shares owned by the family trust, if John Smith wanted to "rebel" against his eldest brother, he had only two ways to achieve it.

One is to obtain support from shareholders holding more than 50% of the shares.

Or obtain support from more than half of the votes cast by the board of directors.

Either way, it would be crucial to gain the support of Barron, who owns 12.5% ​​of Sinclair Group and has a seat on the board of directors.

The Sinclair Group's board of directors has 11 directors. In addition to the six brothers and sisters in the family, the attitudes of the other five board members are particularly important.

To remove David Smith from the board, John Smith would need the support of six of them.

According to the information John Smith revealed to Barron, he has now obtained another vote on the board of directors, plus the three votes of the "current three siblings". As long as Barron supports his proposal, he can get one more vote and convene a board of directors to complete the "feat" of removing the eldest brother David Smith.

"We are friends, John. I will support you as long as it is beneficial to the Sinclair Group."

Barron smiled and said:

"But before that, I still want to know where you plan to make the next breakthrough?"