Currently, among a bunch of subsidiaries in Hong Kong, Hutchison Whampoa is the largest. The large number of talents accumulated by Hutchison over decades has also allowed Hutchison to smoothly expand in various businesses, such as ports, mining, etc. wait.
Hong Kong Electric is a public utility in Hong Kong and can only remain listed. Chen Zhiwen will invest some resources in Hong Kong Electric, but it will definitely not be the main one. Although the other Wharf is a wholly-owned subsidiary like Hutchison Whampoa, its main business is still revenue. Renting has been like this since its establishment a hundred years ago. The future direction is obviously the holding and purchasing of industrial and office buildings.
Therefore, Chen Zhiwen intends to give a large number of good development and investment opportunities to Hutchison Whampoa, so that it can become a super giant company in Hong Kong. At the same time, its overseas business is also developing very well, and it also has the opportunity to become a top Fortune 500 company, and its ranking is high. The kind before.
However, it is difficult to say this. There are too many opportunities in the mainland in the future. Except for a few large investments, he will also let his companies develop freely to a certain extent. Maybe each has its own destiny. For example, in the current situation where history has completely changed. Under this situation, the future Internet landscape in China may be completely different. Maybe one of them will invest in one of the future "BAT" companies.
Choosing one of these high-tech service companies may be worth the lifetime struggle of many large consortiums. For example, Li Zekai in history lost 20% of Tengxun shares. Otherwise, just looking at paper data, his wealth would be No less than his old man Li Jiacheng.
"Okay, as far as I know, the debt ratio of these five real estate giants is not very high. I have to say that these people have really good vision." Zhou Jiayang said: "When I follow up, I will check out the mid-sized real estate companies in Hong Kong and above. Regarding the asset-liability ratio problem, I think that as long as the debt-to-liability ratio is not ridiculously high, we can invest appropriately. As for funding, it is not a problem. Standard Chartered Bank can handle this matter."
"Okay, let's cooperate with Standard Chartered." Chen Zhiwen nodded and said, "Then try to use loan funds. Bank loans are actually not available during this period."
"Bill Winter is probably going to be extremely happy." Yang from the Zhou family said with a smile.
"Then the investment strategy in Hong Kong in the past six months is like this. For Hisense Bank, it still needs to absorb deposit funds, but recently it has been converted into foreign exchange. Is it a bit difficult?" Chen Zhiwen asked again.
"It's a bit troublesome. Now many Hong Kong rich people or ordinary people are trying to convert their hands to Hong Kong dollars. This has caused the Hong Kong dollar exchange rate to fall. Officially, it is 5.8. The Hong Kong government may not be able to handle it. It is estimated that it will break 6 soon. Yes." Huo Jianning replied.
"Don't worry about these, just change when you need to. The exchange rate in the future will only be lower. If you change now, you will still have the opportunity to earn it back in the future." Chen Zhiwen ordered without hesitation. In the original history, the exchange rate of the Hong Kong dollar fell all the way to 9.6, this is still official, we don’t know what it is on the black market.
"Okay, except for the most basic operations, I will convert everything else into US dollars or Japanese yen." Huo Jianning said.
"That's it for now. This economic crisis won't end in a year or two. It's just the beginning now. We just need to start and get some benefits. When the best time comes, we'll see where the situation goes," Chen Zhiwen said. .
If you don’t have much money in hand, you just need to take advantage of the economic crisis to buy it when the prices of various assets are low. But if you have enough money in hand, you can save the market to a certain extent. In this case, maybe It has other unexpected benefits. Everything you are doing now is naturally just to have more trump cards in your hands by then.
Things in Hong Kong are properly arranged. Hutchison Whampoa and Hisense will do what they should do as required, while other companies can just stay as they are. The main business of Wharf is Harbor City and the main business of Hong Kong Electric is Power generation and other investment projects, such as Wharf's in Wanwan, are not large in scale, so we can just follow the trend.
As for the investment projects in the Mainland, the Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan Expressway has sufficient funds and the Mainland also hopes to complete it as soon as possible. In the past year or so, several teams have been working in several shifts with people and machines stopped, and finally finally In October, the 23km expressway in the Yanjing section was completed and opened to internal traffic. In this way, at least a small part of the congestion in Yanjing can be alleviated.
In the United States, the U.S. government has not given any advice on the "foreign acquisition of Disney." According to the Morgan family, the White House is aware of the matter, but the response has not yet been decided. , this matter may be just a small matter for the White House, and it will take some time to get results.
Chen Zhiwen is not in a hurry about this. Normal large-scale cross-border acquisitions will take one or two years or even longer. This is still a good-faith acquisition. If the acquired party is unwilling, it is basically impossible to succeed.
This kind of large-scale acquisition needs to be entrusted to a large investment bank first. The investment bank will first use its own connections to test out the U.S. Department of Commerce and the White House. This is the first step. If even the Department of Commerce and the White House do not agree, and the investment bank has nothing to do, then The acquirer should stop the loss immediately and at most pay an investment bank hundreds of millions of dollars in interruption fees.
And if the White House and the Department of Commerce agree, then they will formally propose the acquisition and find a way to get the acquired company to agree.
After that, we still have to go back to the Ministry of Commerce, but this is a formal document. The Ministry of Commerce will also negotiate with the White House and the two Congresses on this matter. If they finally agree, then the acquisition will be considered successful.
However, if it involves monopoly, it still needs approval from antitrust agencies or courts.
If these processes fail later, the loss will be measured in hundreds of millions of dollars. Therefore, it is very important to obtain verbal consent from the White House and the Department of Commerce as the first step, but this kind of thing involves a relatively large area.
Disney is not only an honorary brand in the United States, but also involves the employment of tens of thousands of people. However, this kind of thing is not a big deal to the White House or the Department of Commerce. It is normal for the queue to take a long time.
The matter entrusted by Henry Morgan is even simpler. To acquire a farm, as long as you have money, especially Argentina in South America, which is currently in a debt crisis. As long as you have U.S. dollars, state-owned farms can be sold at will. The kind that is close to the rainforest. Land reclamation can also be negotiated. They are all permanent property rights. Multiple documents were sent to Chen Zhiwen's desk, which made him hesitate for a while. After all, no matter how rich he is, facing such a large area of land, he feels that he cannot spend too much. Among these, you can only choose a few appropriately. After you make a fortune in the Japanese real estate market or the American technology market in the future, you will have sufficient funds by then.
The end of the year is coming soon.
At the end of this year, a big event happened in the American video game market.
Because of the emergence of Midea, the American game market has undergone serious changes from its original history, but some things are still the same. For example, Atari has always existed, but it is not as successful or rich.
Facing the powerful Midea Games, Atari had no choice but, as in its original history, it bought the right to adapt the game "ET."
"ET" was released in the summer of 1982. It took in a box office of US$430 million in the US market alone, and more than US$800 million globally. Almost all children with reasonable financial means know the contents of this movie. little aliens, and these children themselves are big customers of video games.
Under this powerful combination. In theory, the game released must be a hit, but unfortunately, Atari executives were too eager to seize the Christmas season of 1982. They were caught in a loophole when negotiating with Warner to purchase the copyright. As a result, the agreement was delayed until the end of October. , Atari spent 35 million US dollars to obtain the copyright fee for "ET Alien". There are only two months left before Christmas, and the production of game cards also takes two or three weeks, which can be left to Atari's research and development. There is only more than a month left.
Games launched under such emergency circumstances must have various problems, so the market gave a severe slap in the face. A large number of people demanding returns gathered in front of supermarkets and dealers across the United States. This incident It soon appeared in the newspapers. After Henry Morgan found out about it, he also rushed to Hong Kong.
"Eric, Atari is completely finished this time. I asked around before coming to Hong Kong. They sold almost 4 million cards during the Christmas season. If each card is sold for 80 US dollars, it's a total of 300 million. U.S. dollars, now that we have to return them, Atari will not only have to spit out the previous money, but if all the procedures and losses are included, it will lose at least one to two hundred million U.S. dollars." Henry Morgan said.
"Four million? The appeal of this ET is really strong." Chen Zhiwen was a little surprised after hearing the data. Even his own "Tank Battle" did not have such high short-term sales during the Christmas season. It was caused by American movies. The popularity effect of IP is really too high. An IP character that is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people can be known to some people in the world. If some people are willing to spend money, the magnitude will be millions and millions, even exceeding the painstaking efforts of Midea. Several games.
Of course, this is also a marketing tool. Whether it can survive in the long term depends on quality, but the former is also very important. If Atari's game this time is not too rubbish, but has good playability, it will definitely make a fortune. .
"ET's popularity is too high, which means that game cards are too expensive. Did you know that Warner hired some toy companies to OEM ET's plush toys? In the past six months, more than 20 million of them have been sold worldwide. , the sales volume is also 200 million US dollars, and Warner has earned more than 50 million US dollars. This is just a toy, and I don’t know how many things can be produced in the future." Henry Morgan said with a smile.
"It is true that once Hollywood succeeds, it will be easy to make money." Chen Zhiwen said with a smile. Once this kind of IP or cartoon character becomes popular, the speed of making money is really no worse than that of some of the world's top 500 companies. Let's talk about the Disney of later generations. , although there are many kinds of businesses, the most basic foundation is a bunch of cartoon characters and superheroes.
"No matter how clever Hollywood's money-making methods are, it has nothing to do with us. If you can acquire Disney in the future, maybe you can try it, but that's not what I'm here for today." Henry Morgan continued: "Although over the years, Midea surpasses Atari in terms of scale, but it cannot compare with various channels in the US market. For your game console, the main channel is still various large supermarkets, right?"
"You mean, take over these terminal channels?" Chen Zhiwen asked.
"Yes, most of them are actually independent merchants, but they signed an exclusive agreement with Atari. Now after Atari goes bankrupt, they can become Midea's channel. I think they are also happy." Henry Morgan laughed. said.
"That's okay. Our channels are not perfect anyway." Chen Zhiwen nodded and said, because the sales volume before was very impressive. The sales volume in the European and American markets exceeded the production capacity in Asia. In addition, the channels in major supermarkets are basically able to A certain level of coverage has been achieved, so the entire Midea Group has not spent much energy on developing other channels.
As time goes by, no matter how popular the product is, it will slowly lose its popularity. In this case, it is also necessary to explore other channels.
"Thanks for the reminder." Chen Zhiwen said again.
"It's nothing. In fact, if I don't say it, you will definitely think of it." Henry Morgan shrugged and said, "I came to Hong Kong this time. Actually, I told you this matter just by the way. The most important thing is to represent our Morgan family. Go to the mainland."
"Is there any big cooperation?" Chen Zhiwen asked.
"Actually, it's just a big loan. Our family thinks that I have a good relationship with you and you have a good relationship with the Mainland, so they sent me to find out more about it first and try out my words first. If the Mainland agrees, then we will follow up. There is a professional team coming,” said Henry Morgan.
"This is actually a good business. I believe that the domestic export industry will not be bad in the future, and there will be no problem in repaying the loan. But please don't involve me in your affairs, I will not participate." Chen Zhiwen said.
"Hahaha, it's just as I expected. Don't worry, this matter won't affect you." Henry Morgan said with a smile.
Early the next morning, Chen Zhiwen came to the Midea headquarters building in Yuen Long. It was built two years ago. It is not high and only has 20 floors. In fact, it is just a makeshift building.
"Lao Lei, you should know what happened at Atari, right?" Chen Zhiwen asked.
"I know." Lei Shengli nodded and said.
"Yesterday Henry Morgan came to me in Hong Kong and asked me to take over some of Atari's channels. There is no problem with these, but I want to take over Atari's so many gaming talents." Chen Zhiwen said.
Over the years, Atari has been beaten by Midea in the game market, but the fundamental reason is that Chen Zhiwen, a prophet with a golden finger, is too unbelievable. All kinds of classic games have been released, and they cannot beat normal games.
The technology of the Atari team is still very strong, which is what Midea needs, but it is also a relatively weak weakness.
(End of chapter)
