Rebirth of England.

Chapter 729 Ranked Fourth
"So far, we have basically completed the integration of the previously acquired Bank of America. Since the second half of last year, personal savings deposits, including those of Bank of America and Bank of England, have shown an upward trend, which means that savings banks have shown signs of recovery..."

During the subprime mortgage crisis, Standard Chartered Bank acquired and merged IndyMac Bank and Merrill Lynch's commercial bank, which expanded Standard Chartered Bank's business from emerging markets such as the UK and Asia, Africa and Latin America to the American market.

In addition to the savings bank, the investment banking business of the merged Standard Chartered-Merrill Lynch Group is basically attributed to their investment and wealth management department, Merrill Lynch Investment.

Especially after acquiring BGI, the asset management department of Barclays Bank, the scale of Merrill Lynch's investment funds has jumped to the forefront of the world. Although there is still a slight gap compared with Vanguard Group and BlackRock Group, the scale of assets under management has also reached trillions of US dollars.

It is worth mentioning that although BlackRock lost to Standard Chartered Merrill Lynch in the competition to acquire BGI, it later acquired Morgan Stanley's fund management department. Most importantly, BlackRock obtained the asset management business of many public investment funds in the United States. Therefore, its scale began to expand explosively, and it was able to be compared with Vanguard Group in one fell swoop. Such treatment is enough to make it be called America's "own son."

It was for this reason that Barron was able to convince the British government to entrust the management of many of Britain's public investment funds, including some pension funds, to Standard Chartered Merrill Lynch.

Otherwise, in this field, financial groups with a strong British background such as Standard Chartered Merrill Lynch may find it difficult to compete with American financial groups such as Vanguard Group and BlackRock.

In the end, Merrill Lynch Investment, the asset management arm of Standard Chartered Merrill Lynch, was awarded the management of assets worth more than 5000 billion pounds, including the British Pension Fund and the Public Investment Fund.

This also brings the total assets managed by Merrill Lynch Investment Management to US$3.5 trillion, making it the world's fourth largest asset management company after Vanguard Group, BlackRock Group and UBS Group, and ahead of State Street Corporation.

As the world's fifth largest asset management company, State Street Corporation manages approximately US$3 trillion in funds.

Merrill Lynch Investment has begun to significantly expand the size of their ETF funds based on the ETF fund iShare of BGI, the former Barclays Asset Management department, which they acquired. Not only has it been buying U.S. stocks in large quantities, but it has also been buying stocks in Japan and South Korea when their stock indexes were low after they were shorted.

If we calculate only based on ETF funds, the fund size owned by Merrill Lynch Investment would rank among the top three in the world.

Another thing worth pointing out is the Zeuss Fund owned by the New York branch of DS Group. This was their earliest quantitative fund, which was initially jointly established by DS Group and Goldman Sachs Group.

The shareholding ratio at that time was that DS Group held 60% of Zeuss Investment Company's shares and Goldman Sachs Group held 40% of the company's shares.

However, during the subprime mortgage crisis, because Goldman Sachs was in urgent need of funds, it withdrew their investment and profits from the Zeuss Fund. Eventually, the Zeuss Fund became a wholly-owned subsidiary of the DS Group.

Now Goldman Sachs has basically survived the crisis and has recovered some of its losses from shorting in Japan and South Korea.

In addition, the quantitative easing policy launched by the Federal Reserve in late 2008 has made Goldman Sachs more financially secure. Last year, Goldman Sachs President Lloyd contacted Barron, hoping to invest part of the funds in the Zeuss Fund again.

Of course, Baron would not say that he was still dissatisfied because Goldman Sachs withdrew its investment in the Zeuss Fund at that time. After all, everything is for profit.

However, this time Goldman Sachs once again invested money into the Zeuss Fund. Of course, it is impossible to directly hold shares in the investment company where the fund is located as before. It can only invest the money directly into the fund pool of the Zeuss Fund like ordinary fund investment. This means that this part of the funds not only needs to pay a part of the management fee to the Zeuss Fund, but also its profit part needs to be shared with the fund according to the regulations of the Zeuss Fund.

Since it can bring him benefits, Barron naturally has no reason to refuse. And this time, not only Goldman Sachs Group, but also Wall Street capital such as JPMorgan Chase have invested more or less in the Zeuss Fund.

On the one hand, this can bring profits to the Zeuss Fund, and on the other hand, it can also bundle the interests of these Wall Street capitals here to a certain extent. It can be said to be a win-win situation.

Capital is like this, when you can bring benefits to them, then you are God.

Therefore, the relationship between Barron and Wall Street capital - or more precisely, part of the capital - is closer than ever before.

Otherwise, it would not be possible for short-selling actions like those in South Korea, Japan and Europe to be carried out "in collaboration" with Barron, and Barron would have considerable say.

"There is nothing wrong with putting pressure on the LCR Rothschild Group, Your Highness, but it will definitely affect our cooperative relationship with countries like Greece..."

This time, when Barron met with Wall Street tycoons including Lloyd Trankfin of Goldman Sachs and Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, they talked about the action in Europe, including the one targeting the Rothschild family. Lloyd frowned slightly and said this.

"Moreover, forcing a country to default on its debt is not a trivial matter and will probably cause many chain reactions."

Jamie Dimon also said it at the right time.

Barron certainly understood that these old foxes acted like this not because it was morally unacceptable. If it was for sufficient benefits, even if it meant betraying their loved ones, I'm afraid these people would not be too depressed.

The reason they said this was simply because they hoped to gain more benefits in the future division of the Rothschild family.

Of course, in the eyes of Lloyd and Jamie, their goal was to reap Europe. If they "accidentally" cut off a large piece of meat from the Rothschild family in the process, they could only say sorry and pay attention next time...

But if they were openly targeting the Rothschild family, even though they have fallen now, they still have some foundation.

It’s not that they are afraid of the Rothschild family, but there is always a need to do many things.

For them, there is no need to deliberately target the Rothschild family, but if they must target them...

That definitely requires sufficient benefits.

(End of this chapter)