Xinshun 1730

Chapter 595 The world's largest company short of money

When they arrived at the Governor's Mansion, the Dutch were already waiting there, all of them with serious faces.

With the experience of being completely suppressed in terms of momentum last time, the Dutch didn't talk nonsense this time, and directly handed a thick Ceylon immigration plan to Liu Yu.

When submitting the proposal, everyone's face was not good-looking.

Sitting there, Liu Yu glanced at the outline of the proposal written in Latin, and thought to himself, what kind of crap is this?If this is placed in the sixth department of the imperial court, whoever writes such an official document on immigration will ruin his official career in this life.

The Dutch really regard people as a tool to generate profits. Although they say that they can tolerate a certain and inevitable death rate, they don't really say that the Chinese can be regarded as Tamil slaves.

Raising his hand and throwing the proposal on the table, he laughed and said, "I've heard that the Dutch are the most 'generous', and that's true."

"Even farmers know that in order to reap the harvest, you must first plant the seeds. The prospects of Ceylon are very good. Immigration can bring you great profits in the past. Why bother to criticize everyone? You are also a company, even Those who make money in advance are not happy to invest, and they are indeed 'generous'."

"The more you invest, the more you earn. Why, the company is out of finances? Can't afford to invest this little money? How can I say that VOC is also the number one company in the world at this time?"

The interpreter tried his best to translate all the dirty words in Liu Yu's words. Hearing the rhetorical question of "the company's finances are out of money", Valkner could only smile slightly, pretending to be indifferent, and did not answer.

Now he can't answer.

Because, there is really no money.

The previous Ceylon immigration plan has been reported to the board of directors.

When spices lost their medicinal halo along with the theory of four liquids in the human body, the monopoly of the Netherlands became more and more powerless, and Britain, France and Russia began to attack Dutch merchant ships with mercantilism. Ceylon is a very good profit point in the long run.

Even if the Chinese are not thrown over as debt slaves, there are still profits.

Liu Yu mentioned the important point, as long as the return on investment is higher than the company's average dividend, it is a profitable business.

The company's stock is not divided into spices, immigrants, etc., but is calculated based on a complete company's internal financial accounting.

The east loses and the west earns, and when dividends are finally calculated, they must be merged.

However, Valknier understands the difficulty of the current board of directors... It may be a bit inaccurate to say that there is no money. The accurate statement is that there is not enough cash to be approved.

Now that Liu Yu is aggressive, and he really can't show this kind of difficulty, it will really let Liu Yu completely take the initiative and take the lead, and the momentum of future negotiations will definitely be overwhelmed.

Although the Netherlands is now beginning to decline, its foundation is still very solid.

The seven provinces are not short of money. They bought so many British treasury bonds, and the annual interest paid to the Netherlands is nearly 400 million taels of silver.

It’s just that the Dutch bankers only look at interest and return rates. When the Netherlands and Spain were at war, the Dutch bankers still lent large sums of money to Spain. The Dutch banker borrowed 2500 million guilders.

However, the situation of the VOC East India Company as a "family member" is too special, and it is about to come to an end financially.

It's not that I can't borrow money anymore, but that I dare not borrow money.

Being unable to borrow money and not daring to borrow money are not the same thing.

The East India Company has a board of directors of 17 people, but in fact the theoretical board has more than 70 people.Small citizens, if you buy a three-headed two-hundred-dollar one, of course it doesn't count, and naturally you have no right to speak.

The 17 people belonged to different provinces, and the Dutch provinces were also intriguing.

The seven provinces have to fight for the interests of each other.Just like the incident of the China Trade Commission, the provinces of Amsterdam and Zeeland have made a big deal about the "proportion of ships sent by each province to direct trade with China".

Zelan almost turned the tables with the rest of the companies, and finally created a funny China Trade Commission.

The 17 people are fighting for their own interests in the seven provinces. The 70 members of the theoretical board of directors are constantly reaching out for power and hoping to enter the decision-making level.

Among the 70 people, there are private major shareholders and money from various cities, but they really can't compete with a big oligarch like the Amsterdam Chamber of Commerce.

However, once given the chance, I still hope to take a bite of decentralization.

Faced with this situation, the 17-member group is of course united, but they are all businessmen, and the solution is simple and rude: high dividends, high return rate, and the company has a bright future under the leadership of our 17-member group.

If the theoretical board of directors with more than 70 people wants to take power, it must mobilize the "mass", that is, those small citizen shareholders.

However, small citizen shareholders don't really care about whether it is a group of 17 people or a group of 70 people, as long as they can get dividends.

Minority shareholders saw, oh, 3000 dong a share of stock, for decades, 107665 dong was paid in dividends alone, and the dividend was more than 30 times the share capital.

Then I have nothing to do, so I have to ask how the company operates?Why do you have to look at the company's financial reports and accounts?The 17 people have done so well, is it possible that your 70 directors can get higher dividends than they are now?
The super high rate of return made the 70 directors lose their arrogance and dare not claim power - the game that promised super high returns, the French just played it once 20 years ago, and the Dutch have already eaten tulip bubbles, South China Sea The bubble, plus the Mississippi bubble in France, these three big losses, although I don’t have a long memory, but the previous lesson is still too recent, and I really don’t believe in the high rate of return promised by this kind of verbal promise.

At the time of the Mississippi bubble, small shareholders and ordinary citizens questioned the 17-member committee: Damn, the French Mississippi company promised an annual rate of return of 45% to 65%, and even 500 yuan a share rose to 18000, what kind of concept is this?As long as you take out 500 yuan, it will become 18000 yuan in half a year, and you don't have to do anything, which is equivalent to decades of wages.

What does a 45% annual return mean?As long as you spend all your salary for two years and don't have to do anything every year, you can maintain the same life as before.

What do you 17 people do to eat?Can only give an average dividend of 21% a year?waste!

However, with the sound of the bubble bursting, most of the French nobles and half of the Dutch citizens were cut off as "financial genius" John Law as leeks, and the Dutch citizens realized: In fact, 21% of the The average annual rate of return is pretty good...

Although it has dropped to about 17% now, relatively speaking, the annual interest rate of 17% is really not low.

If the 70-member board wants to incite the public opinion at the bottom to gain control of the company, they have to promise a higher rate of return than the current one, but the 70-member board does not want to imitate the Mississippi bubble and offer a nonsensical 50% rate of return.

As long as the company continues to maintain the appearance of "healthy financial position, reasonable investment allocation, and regular dividends every year", they will have no way to claim power.

But the reality is cruel.

Britain, France, Putanrui and other countries have established the East India Company, and the monopoly is no longer strong enough. VOC can no longer make the astonishing 1640% profit of the spice trade in 1200.

Originally, there was a point of profit growth 20 years ago, and that was the Ostend company incident. VOC was desperately spending money, just to throw Ostend's tea in its hands. I completely gave up the tea business, knowing that I couldn't fight.

Monopoly companies like to spend money to grab the market, and so will future generations.

As a result, the tea that was originally brought into Europe by the Portuguese royal family to claim the status of the upper class was drunk from the old royal court and flew into the homes of ordinary people.

Originally, this was an opportunity for small profits but high sales. If you seize the opportunity, you can take off again.

But just in time for the past few years, there were internal problems in the Netherlands, and the factions of military expansion and disarmament were fighting each other. The Netherlands and Zeeland hoped that the expanded navy would continue to monopolize trade and break the "Navigation Regulations".

But other provinces are not stupid. You Amsterdam and Zeeland benefit from the expansion of the navy, like Friesland where we farm, why pay for the navy?
In 1619, the "proportional tax" policy for each province was established, and each province paid taxes according to the budget of the Republic.At the beginning of business development, most of them were farmers. The agricultural province of Friesland was second only to the Netherlands, and borne 13% of the tax rate. It was reasonable at the time, and farming was quite rich at the time.

More than 100 years have passed, and the tax ratio is still the same. Those who engage in business have made soaring profits, but have not changed the tax ratios of the provinces. Can Flanders be happy?
There was so much fuss and fuss, even the consuls were thrown away, and the provinces were arguing so far that the fleet was basically empty.

British locks, French blockades, and Prussian high salaries rob people, and the East India Company is having a hard time.

In order to maintain the company's image of "very healthy, very profitable, and not short of money", the company resolutely does not publish financial statements every year, but uses high dividends to keep small shareholders from making trouble, and makes public once every ten years: publish public financial statements, It has nothing to do with us, as long as the dividends are in place.

It is made public once every ten years, which means that it is much easier to make false accounts.

Sometimes when we are really short of money and cannot make it through, we have to borrow money.

Or, tear down the east wall to make up for the west wall.

However, it is impossible to borrow money from Dutch bankers. Some Dutch bankers are shareholders. Once the loan is made public, it may cause distrust from small shareholders.

The Dutch people were frightened by the previous three big bubbles. Once the East India Company started to borrow money, they panicked first.

As soon as they panic, the 70-member board of directors will take the opportunity to question the 17-member group and start demanding power.

The 17-member group not only enjoys power, but also has their own huge interests in it because they pay their bills once every 10 years.

As long as you can still occupy the seat, sometimes even if you borrow money, you must maintain a high rate of return.After all, the fundamentals are still there. Outward loans and income from Southeast Asia should be balanced, stretched to the left and right, and repaired and repaired. It can always be maintained.

As long as the wreck stays afloat, the 17-member council in power is profitable.

It is necessary to maintain high dividends so that shareholders do not get entangled in the details, but also cannot borrow from the country to avoid losing confidence, which inevitably leads to two roads of no return.

First, investing requires short-term returns as much as possible.Stealing, robbing, forced labor, turning Chinese into debt slaves, etc., those investments that may take a long time to pay off are no longer considered.

Don't think about long-term returns or long-term benefits.

Second, there is no way to borrow money at home, so go abroad to borrow money.

The average interest rate in the country, based on the reputation of the East India Company, can borrow at a low interest rate of about 5%, but in order not to reveal the truth, it is possible to borrow in the East India at a high interest rate of about 18%.

Anyway, the 17-member board of directors overwhelms the rest of the directors and the federal and provincial councils, and only reports accounts once every 10 years. As long as the borrowed money is wiped out within 10 years, the domestic minority shareholders will not know.

It can also prevent the 70-member board of directors from taking the opportunity to ask for a share of the company's management rights.

The current situation is like this. I know that Ceylon is an important profit growth point for the company in the future, but I have no money to invest.

This is not simply a question of whether the Chinese are debt slaves. Even if they are debt slaves, if they want to be rewarded, they have to make some upfront investment.Debt slaves are at best just to reduce labor costs, but things like farm cattle and seeds also cost money.

The board of directors asked the governor of Batavia to solve the problem, but Dashun just attacked Japan and cut off the trade between Japan and the Netherlands, which broke the company's stable cash flow.

Where does Batavia have money?
(End of this chapter)