Jing Shufeng sat in his office for a while, sorting out the thoughts in his mind. His good sleep last night made him energetic and clear in thinking.
His office is not the original chairman Zhang Yanqi's office on the 33rd floor. When he came to work at Uber in early April, he only asked for a small office on the 32nd floor, with an assistant named Xiao Xia, who was familiar with the company's situation.
After being appointed chairman and CEO last week, he moved into a 70-square-meter office on the 33rd floor.
As for the original office, let's keep it for now. The feng shui is not good. Several chairman of the board have been replaced. He won't use it anyway.
After a while, Jing Shufeng walked into the conference room on the 36th floor with his beautiful young woman assistant Xiaoxia.
Uber's board of directors has a total of eight seats and has undergone several changes since it was listed for more than two years. The current directors are representatives of major shareholders.
They are: three seats for Uber, one seat each for Apple, Tencent, Weibo, Baidu, and Sequoia (China).
Don't be surprised why there are eight seats on the board of directors? And even numbers are obviously not conducive to voting. This is determined by the company's "Articles of Association".
Within the legal framework, a company can arbitrarily set the number of board seats and structure. However, it is usually affected by factors such as financing, shareholders, founders, and mergers during the company's development process.
Uber’s eight board seats were developed from previous financings and the acquisition of Didi. After all, major shareholders need to have their own representatives on the board of directors.
Moreover, as a young Internet company, Uber currently does not have complicated operations such as independent directors and executive directors on the board of directors. All of them are director seats.
As for the fact that even numbers of people make it difficult to vote, this is not a problem. Because Uber’s board of directors votes are calculated based on the proportion of voting rights held by the shares held. They are not counted based on the number of people.
As the time for the board of directors meeting approached, directors from various companies arrived in the conference room one after another, and those who were familiar with each other greeted each other. Shen Nanpeng, a partner of Sequoia China, and Wei Dongjun, a modest member of Sina, had some personal relationships.
"Mr. Wei, how are you lately? Are you busy?" Shen Nanpeng pulled out his chair and took the initiative to say hello.
Weibo is known as the "cesspit". The most negative emotions and various creatures on the Internet can be seen on it.
The most active topics on Weibo, or hot searches, are often related to entertainment news.
And Shen Nanpeng’s Sequoia (China) has made a lot of profits and attention in the Internet arena in recent years, such as the merger of Didi and Uber, the merger of Meituan and Dianping, and the battle between Mobike and Ofo. He is behind it all.
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But today, there is a situation that cannot be ignored. The domestic economy has reached the deep water zone of reform, and the dividends of the mobile Internet era have basically been fully absorbed. Now, if venture capital funds want to invest in a giant, it is basically a dream.
The two best targets on the market now are: Alipay and Douyin.
Therefore, Shen Nanpeng's interest in making money has shifted. His private equity focus is on investment opportunities in three major directions: technology, medical health, and consumption.
At the same time, Sequoia (China) has set up a film and television investment fund, which is the top figure in the entertainment industry: capital! He is the most powerful person in the entertainment industry, and his meager fortunes are naturally intertwined.
Sometimes, public relations does not mean just spending public relations money, but calling friends is also public relations.
Wei Dongjun smiled and shook hands with Shen Nanpeng, "Mr. Shen, hello, hello. I'm fine lately, there's no legal coffee."
Most of April this year has passed, and there have been news about several celebrities becoming pregnant, becoming mothers, and having affairs. These are all trivial matters.
"Haha!" Shen Nanpeng laughed knowingly, and sat down together with Wei Dongjun. Nowadays, more and more celebrities are falling out, mainly because the domestic atmosphere is changing. Those who evade taxes, those who smoke that stuff, those who criticize, and those who practice in groups Wait.
Uber's chief operating officer (COO) Gu Rui and chief financial officer (CFO) Tian Yu are board members. When they came in, they nodded slightly and smiled at Jing Shufeng at the main seat.
Apple's director is Adrian Perica, Apple's vice president of corporate development, responsible for acquisitions, mergers and strategic investments, reporting directly to CEO Tim Cook.
Tencent's director is Liang Fengxia, who serves as Tencent's deputy general counsel. Today she made a special trip from Hong Kong Island to hold a board meeting.
The director appointed by Baidu is also a vice president. He was once responsible for Baidu's related financial work and is in a semi-retired state.
As a minority shareholder of Uber, Baidu’s representative on the board of directors basically has a hand-raising function.
"Everyone is here, let's have a meeting!" Jing Shufeng nodded to Dong Secretary Xin Gui and announced.
Generally speaking, the secretary to the board of directors is a confidant of the boss, but he has no candidate to replace the secretary to the board of directors yet.
The atmosphere in the conference room suddenly became solemn.
Uber's current "difficulty" is visible to the naked eye. Directors are responsible for the bosses behind them. This responsibility includes paying attention to the stock price and a series of strategic directions of Uber. The newly appointed Jing Shufeng, who The biggest halo is: Mr. Jing’s assistant. Before that, he was a French-speaking secretary.
This simply won't convince anyone else in this room, nor the capital markets.
Jing Shufeng convened the board of directors step by step and elaborated on his development vision for Uber's future prospects. Each of these suggestions and adjustments require the approval of the directors. Of course, with the voting rights held by Phoenix Group, this is actually a step-by-step process. process.
The Phoenix Group has the final say on how Uber operates internally. Igao has always liked this feeling of control. He hates the kind of verbal battles required on the board of directors in order to advance a merger and acquisition.
What if I just hold a large number of stocks?
Shenhao has the privilege of being willful.
In fact, in the Hong Kong stock market, before the realization of AB shares, the old families held more than 50% of the shares of their core companies and firmly controlled the companies. This is a normal situation.
For example, in the U.S. stock market, those who hold 5% of the shares are considered major shareholders. This is the result of their development for a hundred years.
There are always some uncontrollable factors that divide equity. Time is the greatest magician.
When Jing Shufeng finished explaining his strategic ideas after taking charge of Uber, before the formal voting stage came, Adrian Piccia, a director from Apple, knocked on the solid wood conference room in dissatisfaction: "
Mr. Jing, I don’t care how you work at Uber or how you test your ideas. If Uber’s performance improves, it will only take a few quarters.
I want to ask now, in the face of such a sharp drop in Uber’s stock price, which has seriously damaged our interests as Apple, doesn’t your Phoenix Group take any measures? What does Boss Jing mean?”
Although Adrian Piccia was a foreign devil, he was still very fluent in Mandarin. He was outspoken and immediately attacked.
His words also represent the thoughts of other shareholders: Don't talk to me about Uber's internal reforms and strategic direction, you are a fool, hurry up and solve the problem of the stock price falling by half!
