Rebirth: The Era of Hong Kong Tycoon

Chapter 101 [Foundation Ceremony of Galaxy Center]

On December 2, the weather was fine.

Wan Chai, Hennessy Road.

The Galaxy Center, with a total investment of 1 million Hong Kong dollars (originally planned to invest 8000 million Hong Kong dollars), officially broke ground today. Hong Kong government officials, business leaders, bankers, media, etc. were invited to participate in the groundbreaking ceremony.

This project is a joint venture site of three companies. Evergrande Real Estate holds 50% of the shares, China State Construction Holdings holds 30% of the shares, and Liao's Enterprises holds 20% of the shares. However, the outside world regards this project as a commercial project of Evergrande Real Estate. .

The final blueprint proposal for the Galaxy Center is:

A building composed of two floors in the basement, five floors in the podium (platform), and two 5-story office buildings.

The two-story basement is used as an underground parking lot, and the units on the five-story podium are used as boutiques, restaurants with different styles, movie theaters and other entertainment venues.

The central position of the 5-story podium building is the circular central hall, that is, the first to fifth floors are connected, and the central hall can hold various performances-fashion shows, concerts and exhibitions.

The exterior design of the two office buildings was proposed by Lin Rongheng. The buildings are very characteristic: the exterior wall structure of the sparse pattern (a large number of square windows on the outside), each window (square) is deeply recessed, and utilizes the structure of the building. Shade windows and doors are made of aluminum window frames and colored glass, which greatly reduces indoor heat and saves energy;
At the same time, all facilities in the building are controlled by advanced computer systems, including alarms, air intensity adjustment, water supply, lighting, security and communication systems.

The entire Galaxy Center can provide office buildings with a rental area of ​​more than 50 square feet and provide shops with a rental area of ​​18 square feet.

It can be said that before 1973, Evergrande Real Estate would only invest in this commercial building project, but Lin Rongheng wanted to completely establish the reputation of Evergrande Real Estate in this project.

As a matter of fact, at today's groundbreaking ceremony, all the invited guests were amazed by the blueprint displayed.

Of course, in order to achieve this effect, Lin Rongheng deliberately persuaded Xu Shixun and Liao Liewen to increase the investment budget; in order to persuade these two people, Lin Rongheng even promised them that the guaranteed bottom profit of this project is 1 million; of course, because the investment budget is high, The start-up capital has also been increased to 4000 million Hong Kong dollars (including land purchase and land supplement fees), and later funds will still be raised through loans and sales of off-plan houses.

The reason why Lin Rongheng dared to make such a promise was because he had absolute confidence;

The entire project took 28 months and was expected to be completed in May 1973.

The sale could have been made nine months in advance, when real estate was at its peak.

According to Lin Rongheng's estimate, there is no problem with the net profit of this project being 1.5 million Hong Kong dollars, and it may even reach 2 million Hong Kong dollars.

If it wasn't for funding issues, Lin Rongheng would never want to sell the Galaxy Center, but he would take the property rights of the shopping center as much as possible.

The groundbreaking ceremony begins!
He Rui, one of the three giants of Evergrande, was the host of the ceremony. For him, such a small scene was naturally handy. After exaggerating the atmosphere, he invited Lin Rongheng to be the spokesperson.

Lin Rongheng walked onto the stage with a smile, looking at the crowd of Xiangjiang tycoons off the stage, his confidence grew even stronger.

"Thank you all distinguished guests for attending the groundbreaking ceremony of the Galaxy Center. The construction of the Galaxy Center will make a great contribution to the prosperity of Wanchai. With the real estate in Central and Admiralty becoming increasingly saturated, the commercial center of Xiangjiang is bound to be a 'prosperous East'. Shift', adjacent to Admiralty in Wanchai, will undertake the important task of spreading Xiangjiang Commercial Center. The design concept of the entire building of Galaxy Center is "energy saving, high efficiency and unique shape". It will bring huge profits to every investor in the future."

Lin Rongheng talked endlessly about the prospects of the Galaxy Center on the stage, but some real estate tycoons in the audience were powerless. Before 1973, Chinese real estate developers rarely invested in this kind of commercial building projects. There are three reasons:
First, if the investment is too large, once real estate plummets like it did in 1958 and 1967, it will directly put a medium-sized real estate company on the verge of bankruptcy, and even a large real estate company will be seriously injured.

Second, the construction period is too long, and the rate of return is not as good as that of housing.

Third, the rent of office buildings in Hong Kong only started to skyrocket in 1969. The reason is that the relationship between the Chinese government and the American government has eased, and the political situation has become clearer. Therefore, many overseas companies and institutions have come to Hong Kong to set up offices. This has greatly increased the demand for office buildings on the island.

After a large number of real estate developers went public in 1972, using the funds raised from the stock market to grow their companies, Chinese real estate developers began to slowly invest in commercial buildings. The first wave of climax should have begun in the mid-70s.

Therefore, the large-scale investment of Evergrande Real Estate not only attracted the attention of the media, but also some Chinese real estate developers began to pay attention.

After Lin Rongheng finished his speech, there was warm applause from the audience.

The person who spoke next surprised many people. It turned out to be Shen Bi, the general manager of HSBC Bank.

It turned out that the main loan partner bank of Galaxy Center is HSBC Bank, with a promised loan amount of 2000 million Hong Kong dollars, a term of 2 years, and an interest rate of 15%.

The so-called commitment loan is to promise the loan to the customer first, and the customer needs to sign a contract and lend money at any time; the advantage of this is that the customer can save several months of interest.

After Shen Bi came to power, he first said a few words of greeting in broken Chinese to show HSBC's friendliness to the Chinese; the two top executives of HSBC, Sanders and Shen Bi, both had only interests and no ethnicity; especially Shen Bi When Bi was the director of the accounting department in the 60s, he supported many Chinese copycat factories and made great contributions to Xiangjiang's industry.

The key points of Shen Bi's speech surprised many Chinese, because Shen Bi's words indicated that HSBC would cooperate closely with Evergrande Real Estate.

In Lin Rongheng's heart, he didn't take it seriously. This is the benefit of "making the market". You must know that after Chen Songqing "made the market" of Carrian Group in his previous life, HSBC Bank was the bank that gave the most loans to Carrian Group after Yumin Finance; Leaving aside the culprit of Yumin Finance (several masterminds are in the hands of Chen Qingsong), it is HSBC Bank that has been deceived the most.

It can be seen that these shrewd bankers cannot escape the smart speculators.

After Shen Bi finished speaking, Xu Shixun and Liao Liewen, as shareholders, also stepped forward to say a few words, which immediately made many veteran tycoons of Xiangjiang sigh that the current Evergrande Real Estate is really a favorite, and everyone is rushing to cooperate.

It is said that in the first half of last year, Evergrande Real Estate took the land to find someone to cooperate with, but no one responded. I really don't know what the real estate developers thought when they knew it.

However, Evergrande Real Estate developed so fast that no one in the industry knew that the small real estate company that emerged there first became a listed company, and then used the stock market and bank loans to expand wildly.

During the period, everyone also put themselves in the position of the owner of Evergrande Real Estate. If he was the owner of Evergrande, he would definitely not be able to sleep well at night, because he had too many loans, and if there was a little trouble, it was basically over.

Therefore, the success of Evergrande lies in the adventurous spirit of their boss Lin Rongheng.

Of course, the success of Evergrande is also a reference. Many real estate companies are considering finding a suitable opportunity to list the company.

(End of this chapter)