Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 1501 The establishment of the Ming Fed

In the capital, at the southeast corner of Nanxunfang, to the east of Zhan Shifu, a newly built yamen-style building was officially listed: Daming United Savings Bank.The bank, also known as "Ming Federal Reserve Bank" or "Federal Reserve Bank", is the first and only financial institution established in the form of private capital in Ming Dynasty, but has the legal "minting power".

The bank not only has the right to mint coins, but its form of power is clearly stipulated and endorsed by the emperor's edict, the cabinet and the Ministry of Households.

Edicts, cabinet orders, and ministerial documents endowed the bank with enormous powers from the legal level, the most important of which are as follows:
Exclusively issue national unified banknotes "Federal Reserve Banknotes"; manage import and export trade profits (collected by the Ministry of Households); manage imperial court war reparations income (currently only Burma); act as an agent for the emperor's internal treasury and be responsible for investment; provide financial advisors to the imperial court Services; lending to local governments above the government level; holding and keeping reserves for the issuance of Federal Reserve banknotes; providing necessary loans to other large banks (or banks); lending to imperial wars or profitable construction; Ci has already been examined and approved by Jinghua "Chuangcai") Investment and approved loans; independently issued three types of bonds related to war, construction, and trade...etc.

As a national special financial institution, the Federal Reserve Bank of the Ming Dynasty is the second "bank" in the country (the first is Jinghua Bank). In addition to the Jingshi Headquarters, it will also be established in Nanjing, thirteen provinces and Liaodong in the early stage. [-] branches were established in the Kingdom of Ming Dynasty (formerly Tumote, now including the Ordos Department).

These branches are mainly responsible for exchanging "Federal Banknotes" on behalf of the head office, and acting as agents for investment, loans, bonds and other related businesses assigned by the head office.At the same time, there is another important task, which is part of the reserve for the issuance of provincial reserve banknotes, as a countermeasure against possible vicious runs.

Needless to say, the inland provinces and Gyeonggi, the Daming Jinguo (Tumote) branch deserves a separate mention.The treasury of the branch is not guarded by the Tumed Mongolian soldiers. Instead, a bastion-style satellite city is built on the edge of Guihua City. Thousands of "mercenaries" of the bank are stationed in the city to ensure the safety of the treasury. The mercenaries come from the Jinghua Trading Company (controlled by Cao Gan, who is mainly in charge of import and export trade in the inland part).

However, Tumet's Bahanaji Dahan also promised to "do everything possible to protect" the satellite city.

Hannaji’s words are not diplomatic terms, he sincerely wants to protect the “Treasury City”, because the “Treasury City” is also his cash machine to some extent—as long as his idea of ​​​​withdrawing money can be obtained The approval of the Federal Reserve will do.

The key to the power and prestige of the Federal Reserve Bank of the Ming Dynasty lies in two points: first, its capital is extremely strong, with an original share capital of 3000 million taels of silver, several times more than the national stockpile of silver.

As for the second point, it is even more critical: its two largest shareholders are Jinghua and Neijin.Jinghua invested 3000 million in the 1000 million, and invested 500 million from internal funds, directly accounting for half of it.In addition, there are almost a lot of people who have invested in subscriptions, including nobles from the two capitals, high-ranking officials from the capital, generals from all over the country, and even a bunch of clan princes—oh, by the way, Han Naji Khan also participated in the shares as the "King of Shunyi" Yes, even his contribution was as high as 40 taels.

Is this worth it?Behind the Ming Fed Reserve stands almost the entire ruling class of the Ming Empire. Whoever dares to oppose the Ming Fed Reserve will be regarded as self-destructive.

Business gangs in the North and South also have shareholdings, but due to Gao Pragmatism's restrictions on the identities of the participants (mainly considering the influence of Shilin), no matter whether the North or the South, the rich merchants are turning corners to buy shares. The - Westerners call it white gloves, that is, surrogates.Among the shares invested by the officials of the capital, many of them are holding shares on behalf of the business gangs behind them. Only they themselves know what other contracts they have signed in private.

In short, the Ming Fed completed the process from brewing to birth in such a short period of time. As soon as it appeared on the stage, it surprised the world and looked sideways at Kyushu.

Among them, the most interesting ones are probably the officials of the School of Mind, who either themselves or represented the Southern Bank of Commerce and became a shareholder of the Federal Reserve Bank of Ming Dynasty.

At the beginning, Gao Wushi actually planned to exclude the Southern Merchants Group from the Ming Fed, but later Liu Xin helped him calculate in detail, and found that as long as it is not a random investment with no upper limit, after controlling the shares of the Giving School, let them go It is actually much more meaningful to buy shares than to exclude them.

The Federal Reserve of Ming Dynasty is so attractive that even according to the views of later generations, it is also a very special institution.Because although it exists mainly as the central bank in the actual sense of Ming Dynasty, it also retains many functions of commercial banks.

As we all know, the central bank mainly exists for the financial stability of the country, while the commercial banks exist for their own interests.

Therefore, it is usually stated that when the Federal Reserve acts as a central bank, it does not need to consider profit itself.However, the high pragmatism requirements for it determine that it needs to rely on profits to win the favor of the "ruling class", so commercial banks' profit means—at least part of the profit means must be retained.

In this way, such a powerful freak as the Ming Fed was created.

Now that it is already a freak level, it must not be left to its own devices, and there must be means of control and supervision, so the two supporting systems were born.

The first set of systems is very simple: at the beginning of the establishment of the Ming Fed Reserve, it was clearly stipulated in the three-level administrative order of imperial edicts, cabinet orders, and ministerial documents: The result of the internal voting is entitled to the daily voting rights of the original share capital held by Jinghua Bank, the royal family, most nobles, most generals, and some real school officials.

In other words, in addition to Jinghua Bank’s 1000 million taels of voting rights for original shares, Gao Pragmatism also enjoys a series of voting rights for original shares including the emperor’s internal funds of 500 million taels, and the term of power is lifetime.This means that as long as Gao Pragmatism is not dead, he has the final say on the daily affairs of the Federal Reserve Bank of Ming Dynasty.

The second set of systems is a bit more complicated: Although the Ming Fed is a joint-stock system, its board of directors does not have a chairman (because the official cannot be bigger than the emperor), and the power of the board itself is actually represented by the "lifetime president" Gao Yushi. Therefore, Gao Wuzhi's status on the board of directors is the lead director (in terms of share capital), but the board of directors does not usually hold meetings.

The fact that the board of directors does not hold does not mean that the major shareholders give up supervision, and the supervision power is given to the board of supervisors.The board of supervisors is still set up according to the share capital, but shareholders can appoint members of the board of supervisors who represent themselves.

The members of the board of supervisors are set up according to the original share capital of 50 taels per person (1 vote). In principle, the effective votes of the plenary meeting are as high as 60 votes.

However, considering that some major shareholders have more than 50 taels, and some small shareholders have far less than 50 taels, there are other regulations: major shareholders can appoint one person to "generally hold the votes of the board of supervisors", or disperse the proxy Minority shareholders can gather together to keep warm and negotiate on their own "jointly holding the supervisory board votes".

In the case of general entrusted holding, decentralized entrusted holding and joint entrusted holding, the error of the original share capital of "holding the board of supervisors votes on behalf of" shall not exceed 5 taels of original shares at most.This article may lead to errors in the total number of votes. Generally speaking, most of the time there should be more than 60 votes—for example, the total number of votes in this session of the Board of Supervisors ended up being 63 votes.

Members of the board of supervisors are elected for three years and can be re-elected indefinitely (as long as the shareholders are willing to appoint them). Except for special circumstances such as violation of the law (national law), violation of regulations (internal regulations), death, serious illness, Ding worry, or resignation due to blame, in principle, no appointment will be held during the term of office. Temporary adjustment.

Members of the board of supervisors (1 vote or more than 1 vote on behalf of) can supervise all the daily work of Ming Fed, and can also ask Ming Fed to show its designated accounts for its audit at any time. However, considering that it cannot seriously affect the daily work of Ming Fed, the same category, There is a one-month "cooling off period" for auditing the same matter.

This supplementary clause also illustrates another system: members of the board of supervisors are not allowed to interfere with the daily work of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minnesota, and of course they are not allowed to cross positions.

In addition to auditing, the daily powers of the board of supervisors are basically the same as those of regular companies in later generations. The standard expression of its main powers and powers is: to supervise and inspect the financial and accounting activities of the Ming Fed; Whether there is any violation of the laws of the Ming Dynasty and the internal regulations of the Ming Fed; require the general manager, manager or other staff to correct their behavior that damages the reputation and interests of the Ming Fed; It can be regarded as theoretical authority); perform other functions and powers granted by the Charter of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minnesota.

The board of directors system "created" by Jinghua is now known to the top management of Daming, and this time the board of supervisors system has been added. To a certain extent, the core of the modern joint-stock company system has almost been introduced.Judging from the degree of acceptance, the results are gratifying, so that Gao Yushi is thinking about whether he can find an opportunity to introduce the "Company Law"-of course, if he really wants to introduce it, he will probably change its name, such as "" Enterprise Law.

Banking, joint-stock system, company law, it is not for fun to connect these things with high pragmatism.In a way, he was actually copying the original historical Dutch homework—but from the 17th century, decades in advance.

In fact, the first bank did not appear in the Netherlands. When the Mediterranean region was still the economic center of Europe, the first bank was born in Italy.

Banks at that time were mainly in the business of keeping property. Merchants deposited currency in banks and had to pay management fees to banks.Moreover, the banks at that time did not develop the loan function, so they could not be regarded as banks in the modern sense.

In 1609, the Bank of Amsterdam was established in the Netherlands, which is the world's first modern bank.The Bank of Amsterdam took advantage of the large amount of funds that were idle in the Netherlands, taking deposits from the Dutch people and providing loans to merchants at the same time.This is the earliest credit business and the core function of modern banks.

With the further development of the Dutch banking industry, from the king to the civilians, including other European countries, all participated in the operation of the Dutch banking industry, and the Netherlands also made a lot of profits as a result.

Jinghua Bank first evolved from Jinghua Bank, and the main factor for its evolution from a "bank" to a "bank" was also the beginning of its loan business.

However, although Jinghua Bank has Jinghua's gold-lettered signboard, the target group of loans is still limited. Basically, it is for businessmen who have business contacts with Jinghua Group, and it is rarely expanded, and it is difficult to expand.

This time, Jinghua Bank invested a large amount of money in the original share capital of the Ming Fed Reserve, which expanded its business scope to a certain extent. Southern businessmen dared to boycott Jinghua Bank, but they certainly did not dare and would not boycott the Ming Fed Reserve. This made Jing Hua The bank has actually completed a "re-exchange listing".

The Dutch "job" in the 17th century was not just banking.On the one hand, the banking industry in the Netherlands continued to develop and accumulated a large amount of capital for financial activities; on the other hand, with the increasing number of enterprises in the shipping age, the enthusiasm of the people to participate in commercial activities continued to increase.

In 1602, the Netherlands established the first joint-stock limited company, the East India Company, which was the first company to raise funds from the public and distribute interest to the public after the company made profits.The East India Company was the world's first joint-stock limited company, innovating the type of modern enterprise.

The company was the first to adopt a joint-stock system for development, and the company's funds were continuously raised from banks and the Dutch people. The Dutch government also became a shareholder of the East India Company for a time.Due to abundant funds and government support, the East India Company soon became the largest company in the Netherlands and played a pivotal role in the Netherlands' trade with India.

But this time, the world's first joint-stock company does not have the share of the Dutch East India Company. Some "joint venture companies" under the high-practice Jinghua are obviously nearly 20 years earlier than it. , there are a bunch of "joint stock joint venture companies" under Jinghua, and the shareholders also eat interest (dividends).

However, the company law is not the first of its kind in the Netherlands.The earliest legislation on companies can be traced back to the world's first commercial law promulgated by King Louis XIV of France in 1673 - the "Commercial Regulations".

In September 1807, France was still the first to promulgate the world's first commercial code law - "French Commercial Code Law". In 9, Germany promulgated the world's first "Limited Liability Company Law".

These commercial laws created a suitable environment for the great development of enterprises in that era, and promoted the further prosperity of business from the legal and social aspects.Gao Wushi felt that with the great development of Jinghua and southern merchants forming a group to compete with Jinghua, Daming could consider enacting a special law to make "the production system conform to the development of productive forces".
-
Thank you for the support of the monthly tickets of book friends "login for the first time", "drinking a pot of scorching wine", "pml5339", "good things end", "Cao Mianzi", "it costs 100 yuan to modify the nickname", and "the vase of frost", thank you!
Thanks to the book friend "Book friend 160804184420909" for the support of 8 monthly tickets, thank you!

PS: A member of the working people wishes everyone a happy May Day!

(End of this chapter)