Rebirth of England.

Chapter 649: The Temptation of Finance

Chapter 649: The Temptation of Finance

Before Christmas, on December 12, the film version of "Downton Abbey" was released in the UK.

In fact, the movie version of "Downton Abbey" itself is not a big production, and the production cost is only 2000 million US dollars. After all, Barron knows that in the original time and space, the first movie version of "Downton Abbey" was a great success, but when the production team ambitiously increased the investment and produced the second movie version, the result was a big flop...

This also proves that this series of movies does not have the potential to make a profit by relying on big productions. In other words, if they want to make money, one film is enough. Even if they are planning to release a second film, it is best not to feel too good about themselves and just keep costs under control.

Of course, one of the reasons is that in the original time and space, the main actors of "Downton Abbey" only signed a contract for one movie at the beginning. By the time the second movie was produced, those actors had already become "successful and famous", which led to a huge increase in their pay, and therefore the production costs increased significantly.

In any case, after the movie was released, Barron specially booked a theater and invited some of his friends to watch it, and the final reviews were still very good.

After all, the TV version of "Downton Abbey" has been broadcast in the UK for five years, with a total of six seasons. Many dignitaries, including Her Majesty the Queen, are fans of this series, and its base in the UK is still very solid.

This can be seen from the box office of this movie. In the week of its release, "Downton Abbey" topped the British box office chart.

It seems that, at least judging from the performance of this movie, the global box office of over 2 million US dollars compared to the original time and space will not be much different, and there is even a possibility of surpassing it.

According to previous habits, when the weather in England gets colder, Barron will take his family to Australia where the climate is warmer.

However, because his and Bonnie's second son Richard was still too young, they did not set off early this year.

He could also take advantage of this time to deal with some matters in England.

For example, the expansion of the British Automobile Group...

Prior to this, the British automobile industry had experienced a rather embarrassing period of history. Britain was once the second largest automobile producer after the United States, but its automobile brands were gradually acquired. With the bankruptcy of Rover, the only seedling of the British automobile industry, it can be said that since 2005, the British Empire has lost all its automobile brands...

Fortunately, Barron later stepped in and bought back some brands to form the British Motor Group, which was able to save some face for the British automotive industry.

At present, it seems that the British Automobile Group is relatively successful. In the field of luxury cars, after the launch of Bentley's new flagship, sales began to grow steadily through vigorous marketing; the luxury SUV models launched by Aston Martin have also been well received by the market; the two brands, Land Rover and Jaguar, can still compete with Mercedes-Benz and BMW for the time being...

Under such circumstances, British Motor Group also received strong support from the British government. However, the government has also always hoped that British Motor Group can expand its manufacturing scale in Britain.

After all, as mentioned before, due to the subprime mortgage crisis, the British government predicts that by Christmas this year, the number of unemployed people in the UK will increase by 200 million. What the government is seeking now is naturally to increase jobs, especially relatively stable and high-paying jobs, to maintain the stability of the entire society.

Of course, they will also provide due support to the British Motor Group. However, the production lines of the two brands of the British Motor Group, Land Rover and Jaguar, will be mainly opened in China and South America, where production costs can be reduced. After all, in the competition with brands such as Mercedes-Benz and BMW, cost performance will be a very important factor.

Next, they will expand Bentley's production line at the Crewe plant and Aston Martin's SUV production line in their home country of England.

In fact, one of the main reasons for the decline of the British automobile industry is that British car brands are too conservative. In order to maintain the brand's tone, they insist on hand-made and production, and are too concerned about the quality of raw materials. This makes them lag far behind foreign brands that are vigorously promoting assembly lines in the competition for some mid- and low-end cars.

Just like Bentley and Aston Martin still insist on hand-made, which can certainly maintain the impression of "noble luxury" of British brands, but its production is hard to describe...

After all, for a country's automobile industry, the most solid force is the low- and mid-range cars produced on assembly lines, and its sales can support the entire upstream and downstream industrial chain.

As for hand-made ones, at most a few thousand or tens of thousands of them are produced each year. Their role in promoting the industrial chain cannot be compared with the hundreds of thousands or millions of cars produced by those automobile groups each year.

But in terms of production costs, or just labor costs, Britain is indeed not suitable for the British Motor Group's layout in this area at this time, and it can only increase the production of luxury car brands such as Bentley and Aston Martin.

However, in addition to this, the British Motor Group will also add another engine production base, which will be dedicated to the production of Cosworth's new high-end engines, which will also add a lot of jobs.

“Jobs don’t just appear out of thin air…”

After meeting with the Business Secretary, Barron complained to Julia Moore:
"Without adequate policies, who would be willing to expand the scale of the factory? After all, everyone prefers to make money more easily through finance. The wages of ordinary workers in the UK are so high that they need more profitable advanced products to maintain them. However, the manufacturing industry in the UK is not competitive at all now!"

Just as he said, the financial industry is the pillar industry of Britain. Not only other people, but also Barron himself, after easily earning such huge profits through financial investment, especially shorting the subprime mortgage crisis, even with the memories and experience of his previous life, he almost lost himself in the pleasure of making "quick money"...

But he finally understood that making money through financial investment, to put it bluntly, is a kind of "plundering" of other countries. Perhaps when the West dominated global finance, this method could indeed make it easy to "make money while doing nothing", but how long could this situation last?

If it were just this, then I'm afraid the Devonshire family would become like the Rothschild and Morgan families in the future, and gradually fade into silence after the financial order changes.

How powerful the Rothschild family once was, but due to World War II and some mistakes in decision-making, they withdrew from the American market at the beginning of the last century. Now, they have withdrawn from the center stage of the world and can only retreat to Europe.

After this subprime mortgage crisis, they will probably be much weaker.

Of course, some of this is also due to Barron's "contribution". After all, although the Rothschild family had been driven out of America, they still had considerable influence in the financial industries of countries such as Britain and France. However, with Barron's acquisition of Northern Rock Bank and his investment in Barclays and Natixis, their influence will be partially eliminated again.

(End of this chapter)

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