Year: I had a good time when I was young

Chapter 914: Outbreak and Everyone Has Their Own Selfish Motives

Mr. Zhou, his two uncles, and Zheng Yutong's wife all smiled when they saw him.

When I was talking to Chu Xiangqian on the phone just now, my tone was also very relaxed.

The two of them should even have been teasing and scolding each other, and they immediately understood that Chu Xiangqian was indeed as Zheng Yutong said.

He had no intention of getting angry with him at all, so the four father and his two sons felt relieved.

When asked, several people from the Zhou family also showed joy on their faces.

Chu Xiangqian had thought about laundering the $1.6 million in the Novice Village before.

Moreover, with the annual trade of 5 million US dollars in pearls and gems with J.P. Morgan Jr. and McDonald, Chu Xiangqian will have more and more cash in the future.

Therefore, the business mentioned by Chu Xiangqian and Zheng Yutong was nothing more than an excuse to purchase more gold to preserve its value.

We plan to use Chow Tai Fook’s channels to purchase at least 5 tons more gold every year starting this year.

At that time, gold was only 180 million US dollars per ton, and 5 tons was 900 million.

It may not seem like much, but this business has just started. In the future, let alone 5 tons, 10 or 20 tons per year may be possible.

As for how to pay, of course it is US dollars in cash.

Zheng Yutong, who was already short of foreign exchange, agreed without hesitation.

Moreover, since Zhou Dafu started his business by buying and selling gold, purchasing gold is very easy for them.

Otherwise, Zheng Yutong would not help Chu Xiangqian purchase 1 ton of gold every year.

The profit here may not be high, but Chu Xiangqian estimates that 10% should be no problem.

As for whether the gold is legitimate, no one in Hong Kong cares about it at this time, let alone checking.

Before the electronic office, it was impossible to check many financial transactions because the banks on offshore islands and neutral countries would not even bother to check them.

If the purchases were made in cash, it would be impossible for Hong Kong officials to go to South Africa to investigate whether the funds used to purchase gold and diamonds were legal.

Otherwise, the first one to jump out to oppose or even suppress it would definitely be De Beers, the world's largest diamond production and sales giant.

Moreover, in Africa, for many things, as long as you pay money, they will issue you legal procedures.

Not to mention Hong Kong Island, both Meiguo and Yingguo recognize it.

After a quick calculation, Zheng Yutong and the Zhou family's four sons and fathers concluded that with 5 tons of gold each year, they could make a profit of at least to US dollars.

Converted into Hong Kong dollars, it is more than four million Hong Kong dollars, which is higher than the annual profit of one or two stores.

别说每年1+5的6吨黄金，就算是10吨、20吨，他们都能帮楚向前买到。

Chu Xiangqian is not short of gold, but if he thinks about it, laundering the cash in the Novice Village warehouse and exchanging it for cash will at least cost about 2% to 3% of the funds.

It would be better to change it into gold.

Moreover, he only exchanged 5 tons a year. Compared with Chu Xiangqian and J.P. Morgan, McDonald's annual income from pearls and gems of 5000 million U.S. dollars was less than 1.5%.

In the future, Chu Xiangqian and Zhou Dafu’s gold transactions will definitely increase from 5 tons to 10 tons, or even 20 tons.

As for how Zhou Dafu avoided taxes, that is Zheng Yutong's business.

Chu Xiangqian guessed that this shouldn't be difficult, otherwise this guy would not have refused to take a commission.

However, thinking back to his original purpose, it was just to exchange the US dollars issued in the 1940s and 1950s stored in the Novice Village warehouse for newly issued currencies.

Chu Xiangqian thought about it and decided to maintain the annual quantity of 5 tons for the time being.

If you want to buy more, there is no need to look for Zheng Yutong alone.

In recent years, He Zanxian has also been helping him purchase 2 tons of gold every year.

Even Deng Wei of He Liansheng, also known as Deng Fei, has actually been eyeing the gold in the black market.

If someone is selling gold of unknown origin on the black market in large quantities, call Chu Xiangqian.

Anyway, as long as the gold is re-melted, no one can find out its source.
-
The next morning, before the stock exchange opened, a large number of ordinary citizens lined up overnight and crowded outside banks of all sizes.

Several newspapers under the Oriental Press Group began to be distributed to newsstands at four or five in the morning.

The front-page headline of today's newspaper is, of course, the report that Chu Xiangqian increased his stake in Hang Seng shares.

At around 7 o'clock in the morning, Oriental News would send a small truck to unload 1 newspapers outside several branches of Hang Seng Bank.

It was handed over to the employees of Hang Seng Bank and distributed to depositors who were crowded outside the bank waiting to withdraw their money.

These people saw that Chu Xiangqian not only increased his stake to 34%, but also put up 2 million pounds to guarantee Hang Seng.

With cash support equivalent to 3.2 million Hong Kong dollars, the depositors queuing outside the bank were skeptical at first.

But although they said this, many people knew in their hearts that with Chu Xiangqian's status, it was impossible for him to joke about his own reputation.

It is even more impossible for it to allow its newspapers to slander itself like this.

Among the depositors queuing up, some were from Oriental Press, Chai Wan Pier, Chu's Cinema, Electric City, and taxi companies.

Hong Kong Electric, Shipping Company, Kowloon Racecourse, Universal Studios, etc. are the families of employees of Chu Xiangqian's companies.

They lined up in another queue, waiting to enter various Hang Seng branches to deposit money.

The number of these people is much smaller than those who want to take the money away.

But the sight of people smiling on one side and frowning on the other easily made many people who were planning to withdraw their money gradually give up the idea.

After all, 3.2 million Hong Kong dollars is enough to buy two Hang Seng Banks in the current environment, and there will be tens of millions more.

As soon as the bank opened at 8 o'clock, the families of Chu Xiangqian's employees swarmed into the bank and deposited hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Naturally, some of the customers who withdrew money were dissatisfied.

But I heard someone shouting, 'Let them deposit money first, then we can withdraw more money, right?'

Now the expressions of those dissatisfied people immediately changed.

More than an hour passed by unknowingly, and only one-third of the people in the deposit queue had completed their process when a Hang Seng employee started shouting loudly.

"Someone on the stock exchange is buying a lot of our bank's shares. Our bank's shares are the only ones in Hong Kong that have stopped their downward trend.
The market value has stabilized at 1.5 million.”

The people present were stunned, and then started talking noisily again.

Hang Seng’s market value did reach 1.7 million when it reached its highest point this year.

But after the banking crisis, the Hang Seng inevitably fell below 1.5 million in the past two days.

This is because Hang Seng has been cashing out depositors’ money. Otherwise, if the money cannot be withdrawn, the market value will definitely plummet.

But as soon as the market opened today, some people bought a large number of Hang Seng shares.

There is no need to guess, there must be investors, and quite a few of them, who began to look favorably upon Hang Seng Bank because of Chu Xiangqian’s financial support.

A small number of people who originally wanted to withdraw money hesitated for a moment, then left the queue and rushed to the exchange.

After seeing dozens of people like this running away, someone reacted and shouted, "Damn it, I'm not going to withdraw money. I'm going to buy Hang Seng shares and make some money first."

The person who shouted this was of course a spy arranged by Hang Seng.

But this statement did have a leading effect.

In a moment, at least dozens of people in the queue rushed to the exchange.

This made those who wanted to withdraw money even more hesitant.

Ho Chan-yuan, Ho Chan-yin, Ho Man-lai, and a dozen or so Hang Seng shareholders stood in the office of the head office building and looked down at the situation. They finally smiled.

He Wenli even praised He Zanyuan and He Zanxian, "Ah Xian, A Yuan, it's a good thing that you two went to stop Chu Sheng yesterday.

Otherwise, based on my understanding of Chu Sheng, even if he would increase his shareholding, he would also provide funds to help the bank overcome this difficulty.

But Chu Sheng will definitely wait a few more days.

Even when we can't hold on any longer and have to go to him, he will take action.

It can be said that you two brothers have helped us shareholders recover at least 20 to 30 million in losses.

And by that time, we may have to sell more than 30% of the shares to Chu Sheng, allowing him to directly control Hang Seng Bank."

When other shareholders heard this, they thought it was really possible.

No, if I were Chu Xiangqian, I would probably wait until the bank was about to go bankrupt before taking action.

At that time, in order to avoid being burdened with debt, people had to sell their shares at a 20% to 30% discount.

Now everyone was praising the He brothers non-stop.

Moreover, he was full of admiration for the courage of the two men who dared to block Chu Xiangqian outside the delivery room at Santa Maria Hospital.

If something unexpected happens to the wife, they will want to kill the two He brothers.

He Zanyuan and He Zanxian smiled and waved their hands. After some polite exchanges, they took the opportunity to bring up the matter of lending 7700 million Hong Kong dollars to Zhao Congyian after the bank crisis was over.

The shareholders were surprised again, but they heard that Chu Xiangqian had originally planned to sell 30 Victory ships with a market value of US$1350 million to Zhao Congyan and not take his money for the time being.

Instead, it was treated as a loan and lent to Zhao Congyan.

As for the interest, it’s only 7%, and the principal will be returned after ten years.

Taking Zhao Congyan's shipping company as an example, it made a profit of more than 300 million US dollars last year.

Not to mention the interest, it would be easy to repay the principal of US$10 million after 1350 years.

So He Zanyuan snatched the loan directly from Chu Xiangqian.

However, the interest rate can only be reduced to 6.5%, which is equivalent to only US$87.7 in interest per year.

The shareholders only thought about it for a moment, and some people began to agree.

If he didn't lend the money, Chu Xiangqian wouldn't care at all. After all, he had already planned to sell the 30 cargo ships to Zhao Congyan as loans.

I heard that Chu Xiangqian is one of the only two shareholders of Zhao Shipping. He must know the operating conditions and real profits of this shipping company better than himself and others.

Otherwise, how could someone as capable as Chu Xiangqian do business at a loss?
As soon as these words were spoken, some shareholders who were still hesitant quickly agreed in their hearts.

Seeing this, He Zanyuan couldn't help but laugh and broke the news, "Chusheng's international shipping company will also add 30 cargo ships this year.

When these ships arrived at Hong Kong Island, Chu's shipping company had more than 110 ships.

The tonnage is more than 150 million tons, and it is truly the king of Asian ships. Chu Sheng is so confident, so I don’t need to say more about the rest, right? "

Now even the most cautious shareholders have put their concerns to rest.

Then some people thought that Chu Xiangqian dared to continue purchasing 60 ships in the current environment, which was equivalent to spending a full 2700 million US dollars to expand shipping capacity.

Does that mean that he doesn't care about the crisis in Hong Kong Island?

Or does he think that this crisis is only a short-term one and that the economy will return to its previous state in no time?

He Zanyuan didn't even have time to tell Ye Xiaoli that Mingda held over 100 million Hong Kong dollars in cash.

Plan to cooperate with Hang Seng and Standard Chartered.

He was surrounded by these shareholders, who asked Chu Xiangqian about his views on the economic prospects of Hong Kong Island.

After a long explanation, He Zanyuan continued to talk about Mingda's matter.

Mingda helped Standard Chartered Bank and Hang Seng Bank to contact the real estate developers who had borrowed money from the banks.

They spent money to buy the prime real estate they held, and after paying the money back to the bank, the bank lent it to Mingda.

Mingda then contacted other real estate developers, and through a continuous cycle, he could easily get a large number of properties at a discount.

The bank doesn't have to worry that Mingda, who has 1 million Hong Kong dollars in cash, will not be able to repay the money.

Earn interest steadily from Mingda.

This is an open conspiracy. You can do the same if you have enough cash.

Due to the rise in real estate prices in Hong Kong Island in recent years, there are many construction projects under construction or about to start.

Given Mingda’s scale and production capacity, it can only take up 10% or 20% of the cake at most.

Shareholders only need to think about it to realize that their financial resources cannot support this kind of gameplay.

If you anger Chu Xiangqian and his gang, they can easily snipe you and put you in a dilemma of lack of funds.

It’s better to just enjoy the interest.

And since Chu Xiangqian dares to do this, it means that he is optimistic about the prospects of Hong Kong Island real estate.

Chu Xiangqian ate the meat, drank the soup himself, and bought some stores and properties in good locations.

This proposal did not even require Chu Xiangqian to vote, and it was easily passed as expected.
-
In the afternoon, the number of customers withdrawing money from Standard Chartered also increased. Upon inquiry, many people actually wanted to transfer their deposits to Hang Seng.

As the boss, Juan hurriedly asked his subordinates whether the same situation occurred at HSBC.

After a while, the news came back.

Juan chuckled and stood by the office window holding a cigar, looking at Victoria Bay.

He silently calculated in his mind that with HSBC's strength, even if someone withdrew hundreds of millions of Hong Kong dollars, it would not have much impact on their savings.

But the loss of these hundreds of millions means a reduction in strength.

We will announce that we will take out 50 tons of gold reserves, which can be used to withdraw the equivalent of 3200 million pounds from London.

It will be easy to restore depositors' confidence.

However, this idea was rejected by Juan in just a moment.

The two note-issuing banks are fighting secretly, and the one who will definitely benefit is the younger brother, Hang Seng.

I am not Chu Xiangqian's employee, so why should I help him raise Hengsheng's status?

It would be better to catch HSBC off guard while it still needs a board discussion to catch up.

Absorb part of the social funds into Standard Chartered.

If more rumors are spread, Standard Chartered may be able to absorb hundreds of millions of savings within a few days.

Thinking of this, Juan no longer hesitated, walked to the desk, picked up the phone and was about to call his subordinates.

But when he picked up the phone, Juan looked at his watch again.

It was already past 3pm.

Releasing the news at this time means giving HSBC one more night to hold a board meeting.

Juan sighed and thought to himself, just give face to boss Chu Xiangqian and release it tomorrow morning.

(End of this chapter)