Year: I had a good time when I was young

Chapter 818: Praising first so that you can harvest more leeks

Chu Xiangqian's constant opposition to the representatives of the Malaysian government at the Standard Chartered board of directors resulted in many board resolutions being shelved.

Some directors were very dissatisfied with him because of this, and secretly rejected the plan to cooperate with Chu Xiangqian.

Of course, when it comes to major resolutions, a vote will still be initiated.

But any discerning person could see that Chu Xiangqian was only against the Malaysian representatives.

When it comes to personal grudges, most directors can only look at the Malay representatives with sympathy.

As for choosing sides, since these resolutions did not involve strategic issues of the bank, the other directors just watched for fun.

In order to avoid offending Chu Xiangqian, this guy would stare at me like a mad dog, and I would be the one who would be sad in the future.

After the meeting, when Chu Xiangqian walked out, even Morgan Jr. and McDonald did not come over.

I couldn't help but feel secretly happy.

Just now at the board meeting, I deliberately caused trouble for the Malay representatives, not only because I had a feud with the Malay forces.

He is more proactive in creating an image of "Don't offend me", so that those shareholders who want to take advantage of him will have reservations.

This trick is actually not very clever at all, but most normal people don't want to get involved with someone who holds a grudge.

Chu Xiangqian guessed that he would have a lot of peace and quiet before the horse auction.

Back in Juan's president's office again, Chu Xiangqian did not procrastinate this time.

Directly use the 7.5 tons of gold stored in Standard Chartered Bank to short the British pound for half a year with a leverage of times.

Based on the gold price at that time, 7.5 tons of gold was equal to 1350 million US dollars.

Ten times leverage is 1.35 million US dollars, which is almost the psychological bottom line of the president Juan.

After all, Standard Chartered’s market value at that time was only HK$9.2 million.

The entire Standard Chartered Group has less than 1.5 million pounds.

The cash that Chu Xiangqian borrowed alone was equal to half the market value of Standard Chartered Bank. If this 1.35 would not have remained in the bank and could not be transferred or withdrawn, Juan would not have had the courage to give Chu Xiangqian a 10-fold leverage.

So the next morning, as soon as the contract was signed, everyone in Standard Chartered's foreign exchange department became nervous.

The New York Stock Exchange, the London Stock Exchange, and the Tokyo Stock Exchange were all looking for institutions willing to take over contracts to short the pound.

Fortunately, at the current exchange rate of 1 to 3.6, 1.35 million US dollars is only 3750 million pounds.

Dispersed across the three major exchanges, the average amount per exchange is only 1250 million pounds.

What is even more surprising is that there are many institutions in the Tokyo Stock Exchange that take over short-selling pound contracts.

There is an hour time difference between Hong Kong Island and Tokyo. In just one trading day, contracts worth 700 million pounds were taken up by Sakura's financial institutions and banks.

Chu Xiangqian, who had been keeping an eye on the foreign exchange department of Standard Chartered, immediately ordered people to find out which companies had taken on the 700 million pound contract through Sakura's agency.

In just over ten minutes, after listening to the report, Chu Xiangqian quickly discovered that the common point of these Sakura companies was that they were all companies that needed to import high-tech parts or machines from Ying Country that Sakura could not produce.

It is immediately clear that for these companies, although they are also worried about the depreciation of the pound, they are more worried that they do not have enough pounds and cannot pre-order necessary parts or machines in advance.

In case of losses due to exchange rates, the losses can be passed on to consumers or downstream companies.

Of course, if the responsibility cannot be passed on, then you will have to swallow the bitter fruit yourself.

Moreover, at this time, Japanese benzene companies have become exporters of cheap industrial products.

Large-scale exports bring in a large amount of magnesium dollars, but the British people do not necessarily want to see the magnesium dollar become a universal currency in the world.

Since the magnesium dollar was pegged to gold in 48, the more magnesium dollars were used internationally, the more the market share of the pound would be squeezed, indirectly affecting Britain's imports and exports.

It also allows the Chinese people to plunder the world by printing money.

As the people of Ying are still living in the past, if Chu Xiangqian were in their place, he would also require those companies doing business with Ying to settle accounts with them in pounds.

In this case, Chu Xiangqian naturally doesn't mind selling more short orders to the Sakura people.
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On the sixth day of the Chinese New Year, when Chu Xiangqian went to Hang Seng for a board meeting, he was still thinking in his mind why someone had taken up 7 million pounds of short orders at the London Stock Exchange at 1100 pm yesterday evening.
Unfortunately, after thinking it over, Chu Xiangqian could only conclude that many British people still blindly believed that the newly elected Prime Minister Harold Wilson was capable of leading Britain out of its sluggish economy and restoring Britain's glory.

If this is true, Chu Xiangqian can only say that these politicians who move into Downing Street are often complete outsiders when it comes to economics.

They were full of confidence before the election, but when they actually came to power, they found that the decline of Ying Kingdom could not be saved by internal reforms.

The two world wars wiped out the wealth accumulated over hundreds of years.

The loss of most overseas markets is also one of the reasons why Britain's industry is bound to weaken.

Otherwise, Yingguo would not focus entirely on the financial industry in the future.

It’s not that there are no people smarter than Chu Xiangqian. On the contrary, there are many people who are more far-sighted and wiser than him.

However, the sharp deterioration of the external market environment, coupled with the ever-increasing labor and welfare costs, will force British capital to actively reduce industrial investment.

As industrial investment decreases, huge amounts of funds will naturally flow into the financial and service sectors.

Moreover, in the late 70s, Britain started the privatization process again, and a large number of state-owned industrial enterprises began to be privatized. After a brief economic boom, the industry became increasingly weak.

This was easy to understand for Chu Xiangqian decades later because he had already seen the results.

But in this day and age, even if someone sees the possibilities of the future, they will only think that it is just one of countless outcomes.

Only focusing on short-term interests and ignoring long-term gains and losses is also the biggest drawback of European and American society.

As for the fact that only 10 million pounds of short contracts were sold after the New York Stock Exchange opened at 400 o'clock last night, Chu Xiangqian could only curse in his heart.

He even suspected that Wall Street, like himself, had begun to quietly establish contracts to short the pound.
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The board meeting held by Hang Seng on the sixth day of the Lunar New Year was basically not much different from that of Standard Chartered.

Since Chu Xiangqian had never been involved in the management and operation of the bank, he could only focus on finance and personnel.

As for someone who wanted to terminate the contract for the interest generated by the 12.5 tons of gold two years in advance and automatically convert it into Hang Seng shares, Chu Xiangqian refused without even thinking about it.

Fortunately, this time he doesn't have to threaten that if Hang Seng breaks the contract, he will sell off Hang Seng shares to retaliate.

He Zanyuan, on behalf of the three uncles and nephews of the He family, stood firmly on Chu Xiangqian's side.

Then, after thinking for a moment, several shareholders also opposed the early termination of the contract. The reason was very straightforward. Based on the current gold price, the penalty for breach of contract is 675 million US dollars.

That is five times the 12.5% annual interest on 6 tons of gold.

If Chu Xiangqian gets the money and launches a takeover campaign against Hang Seng at all costs, even if these shareholders unite to push up the stock price, it will be extremely difficult to prevent Chu Xiangqian from obtaining 15.5% of the shares.

After all, the highest bidder wins in the stock market, and the 675 million US dollars alone is equivalent to 3 million Hong Kong dollars. When Hang Seng's market value peaked last year, it was only 1.4 million Hong Kong dollars.

Now that the He family is on his side again, he only needs to buy 10% of the shares from the stock market and then buy 5.5% from the He family or other shareholders.

When his shares reach 34%, even if it is not absolute control, just a veto power is almost equivalent to controlling the board of directors.

By then, the shareholders who had opposed him in the past would definitely be kicked out of the board of directors.

For pure investors, being a shareholder with shares but no voting rights is not a big problem.

But for some families who rely on Hang Seng to raise funds for other family businesses, just being urged by Chu Xiangqian to repay the money is enough to give them a headache.

Even if a shareholder did not borrow money, if something goes wrong in the family business and he wants to obtain financial support from Hang Seng in the future, it would be better to sell his shares in advance.

This is to avoid a large amount of funds being locked up in Hang Seng because of the shares.

Moreover, the three uncles and nephews of the He family, who were the largest shareholders, suddenly stood firmly on Chu Xiangqian's side. Many shareholders had already guessed that Chu Xiangqian and He Zanyuan must have reached a private deal.

If money transactions are involved, there is a chance to kick Chu Xiangqian and He Zanyuan out of the board of directors together.

But after the meeting in the afternoon, when Chu Xiangqian and the three uncles and nephews of the He family appeared together in the VIP seats of the Jockey Club, news came out that Bridge and nine Jockey Club directors also appeared beside them.

The directors of Hang Seng soon guessed that there would be a possibility that a Jockey Club director would appear from the Ho family.

After all, no matter which company's board of directors it is, there will never be an even number of voting rights.

Although there are 13 people including Chu Xiangqian, Bridge's one vote is equal to 2 votes, which is a total of 14 votes.

If this were a vote, the situation would be 7 to 7.

It became inevitable to elect one more person.

Sure enough, the announcement that Chu Xiangqian and He Zanyuan were elected as new directors appeared in the newspaper on the ninth day of the first lunar month.

For a time, Chu Xiangqian and the He family were the most powerful people in Hong Kong Island.

As a prominent family in Hong Kong and Macau for generations, the Ho family is very famous, but it is far from being as successful as Chu Xiangqian who started from scratch and surpassed 9% of other families in just a few years.

Fortunately, in the second year of junior high school, Xue Jinglan asked Linda to transfer her mobile forces to the area around the top of the mountain to be responsible for the peripheral security.

Reporters who wanted to take pictures of Chu Xiangqian could do so anywhere in the city, but some wanted to secretly stay on the top of the mountain.

Before they got close to the top of the mountain, they were stopped by a mobile force in plain clothes at an intersection on the mountainside.

Then the police and gang members would come to the door one after another to greet these reporters who were desperate to become famous.

Even the newspapers where they work are repeatedly picked on by the fire department, tax department, police department, and food department.

There was a reporter who had done something shady in the past and was caught and detained in the Central Police Station. After he was prosecuted, the disturbance died down.

Although Chu Xiangqian had been having some headaches these days because of the newspaper, it did not stop him from personally keeping an eye on the short-selling contracts.

The contract was worth 3750 million pounds, of which London took 1100 million, Tokyo took 700 million, and New York only took 400 million.

Chu Xiangqian simply abandoned the New York Stock Exchange and placed all the remaining 1550 million contracts in Tokyo.

Three days later, another transaction of 1 million was completed, and Chu Xiangqian then placed half of the contract on the London Stock Exchange.

In the end, London took 1300 million pounds, Tokyo took 2050 million, and New York still took 400 million.

When Standard Chartered saw that all the contracts were transferred to banks and institutions in three countries, it immediately felt that it was doing well again.

Moreover, after this $1.35 million futures contract was put on the market, the exchange rate fluctuation against the British pound and the US dollar did not exceed 0.05.

It has been fluctuating between 3.55 and 3.65.

It can be seen that in the market, there are indeed many institutions and capitals that are optimistic that the new policy will be able to save Britain’s sluggish economy after it comes into effect.

Of course, Chu Xiangqian’s contracts are all for six months, which is considered a long-term contract in the foreign exchange market.

Many short-term investors often buy a long-term contract to hedge after shorting or going long to reduce losses.

Chu Xiangqian then asked someone to check Wall Street's forecasts for Britain's economy in the past few months.

According to his memory, Chu Xiangqian quickly realized that after the giants of Wall Street set their sights on a target, they would often first tout the country's economy in the media.

Attract more leeks to join in.

Sure enough, not only on Wall Street, but also in Washington, there were many newspapers and politicians praising Harold Wilson and his Labor Party.

Chu Xiangqian was finally relieved.

Of course, we have no objection to Standard Chartered's desire to continue earning commissions.

Since you have to go through a bank to buy and sell futures contracts anyway, it is better to leave it to Standard Chartered than to short sell with other banks you don’t trust.

But this time his appetite is more than just 100 million US dollars.

The cash he had deposited in Standard Chartered alone exceeded 2 million Hong Kong dollars and 8 million US dollars.

He originally had more than 2.6 million Hong Kong dollars, but a few years ago he bought four buildings and a flour mill that were used as electrical appliances cities, spending 4 million Hong Kong dollars.

Including decoration and purchase of electrical appliances, nearly 1 million yuan was spent, which reduced the price to a little over 2 million yuan.

As for the US dollar, he withdrew 8 million of the more than 6 million in horse racing auction funds last year after they entered Standard Chartered.

Moreover, when the 30 million US dollars entered the family fund, Chu Xiangqian actually exchanged his own pounds into US dollars and then deposited them into the fund account.

In addition, in the previous few years, not all of the pounds obtained from trade with India were exchanged for grain.

He also exchanged all the remaining pounds into US dollars.

The profits from the export of cattle, sheep, sika deer, marine fish, coal business, and shipping business were all deposited in Standard Chartered, which served as the settlement bank.

牲畜每年的利润固定，而且别看1万头牛、1万头羊、4000头梅花鹿、7000吨大马哈鱼、1万吨大西洋鲑鱼好像很多。

But in fact, it only took less than three months to transport all the livestock and sea fish to Sakura.

If it weren’t for the cherry blossom viewing in Hong Kong Island, I would only make two trips a month at most, and the pace would be even faster.

These livestock and marine fish brought Chu Xiangqian 1088 million US dollars a year ago.

The agency that Margaret and Norton worked with earned a total of $328 million.

If Margaret hadn't owned 6% of the export company's shares, this girl would definitely think that Norton, the apprentice, was taking too much advantage of his master and her.
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(End of this chapter)