The office was somewhat somber. Lu Feng and Zhu Lidong smoked in silence. After a long while, Lu Feng spoke up: "Go and make some contact. Don't make this public, so as not to cause any unnecessary trouble."
"Okay!" Zhu Lidong nodded in agreement.
Inside John's office at Schroders, several senior executives sat across from each other. One of them, a white man in his fifties, spoke up: "We just received news that Wall Street may be about to take action against Thailand."
"Make a move?" John was startled and hurriedly asked, "What level? Next Vietnam?"
"No, it's about finance. This matter is related to Lu Feng." The other party explained briefly, and John breathed a sigh of relief.
The current world situation is too tense, like a pile of dry weeds, where the slightest spark could ignite a war, especially in the Asian region.
They can accept the financial battles, though.
“This Lu Feng has caused too much trouble, and now he’s starting to make threats. I never imagined that such a fragile guy could cause so much trouble.” John recounted Lu Feng’s plan to sell his shares.
John initially thought that controlling Jiafeng Group would be a piece of cake, but as things have developed, Lu Feng's tenacity has far exceeded their expectations.
"Do you think he dares to sell? Or rather, is he willing to sell?" John looked at the group of people.
This is nothing more than a gamble, a gamble on whether Lu Feng dares to sell to a state-owned enterprise. If he really sells to a state-owned enterprise, he will definitely get very little money. If he can negotiate with them, he can still get a considerable sum of money and leave with dignity.
"If you ask me, we should give it a try."
Domestically, the senior management of Changhong Group were also surprised when they received Zhu Lidong's call. At first, they thought it was just some bored person making a harassing call, until Zhu Lidong personally flew to Sichuan to tell them about it, and only then did the other party confirm that it was true.
Inside the reception room at Changhong headquarters, seven or eight senior executives sat on the sofa. President Ni, smoking a cigarette, looked at Zhu Lidong and cautiously asked, "Isn't Jiafeng doing quite well? What happened?"
"Nothing has happened. The market is stable right now, and we've made new breakthroughs in the semiconductor field this year. The headquarters building is expected to be operational in September," Zhu Lidong replied.
"Is it because of problems with those billions of dollars in overseas financing?" another person asked.
"No, and the contract was completed a long time ago, otherwise Jiafeng wouldn't have developed so quickly." Zhu Lidong could sense their doubts and said, "There's nothing wrong with the company. The shares being sold were Lu's personal shares, mainly due to some internal issues."
The man at the end of the line subconsciously said, "I've heard they're really embroiled in internal power struggles."
Several people turned their gazes to the man, who immediately realized he had spoken the truth. He coughed twice to cover his embarrassment. Ten percent of Jiafeng's shares were worth a fortune. Regardless of whether the acquisition for one yuan was real or not, if Changhong really invested in Jiafeng, it would be an absolute force to be reckoned with in the home appliance industry.
Mr. Ni silently smoked his cigarette. After a moment of thought, he had a pretty good idea of what was going on. There's no such thing as a free lunch. The only reason for choosing Changhong over other companies was that they were interested in Changhong's status as a military enterprise.
“In any case, the two companies are old friends. If a friend is in trouble, we should definitely help.” President Ni threw his cigarette butt into the ashtray and said to Zhu Lidong, “How about this, we can sign a contract, but this contract is not legally binding. It will pay us two million every month. If anything happens, we can cooperate with each other.”
Zhu Lidong's face lit up with joy upon hearing this. It was still more enjoyable to chat with smart people. The two companies were on the same level, and Zhu Lidong really couldn't bring himself to say that he wanted to borrow the identity of the other company's military industry.
Now everyone understands what we mean. The only downside is that two million is too much.
“You’re a sensible person, but two million a month is a bit too expensive, isn’t it?” Zhu Lidong smiled awkwardly and said, “Because the shares belong to President Lu personally, this money cannot be paid by the company. This amount is too high for President Lu.”
They sign a contract with each other, and it's only two hundred a month?
Everyone present felt it was too expensive, ridiculously expensive. Not to mention a month, even if it were an average of over 100,000 a year, no one could afford it.
Someone nearby thought this was a good deal and wanted to offer some advice, but General Manager Ni quickly waved his hand to stop them and said, "General Manager Zhu, you're in the market, you should understand one thing: there are two things that are precious in this world, one is scarcity and the other is urgency. If something is both scarce and urgent, it can't be bought even with tons of gold."
Now that things had come to this, Zhu Lidong understood that his hasty arrival had put him in a passive position, and that taking this blow was truly worthwhile.
The two sides changed the subject and drank tea for a while. They had lunch together, but the other party still refused to budge. Zhu Lidong had no choice but to agree. He told them to have their lawyers contact each other in the next few days to draft an agreement as soon as possible.
In mid-July 1996, Tiger Fund and Quantum Fund signed a loan agreement with the Federal Reserve, using their combined capital of hundreds of billions of US dollars as a base to leverage hundreds of billions of US dollars. They then began to sign loan agreements for Thai baht around the world, using the borrowed US dollars as collateral.
In late July, amidst the sweltering summer heat, news spread like wildfire: Lu Feng, the founder of Jiafeng Group, had signed an agreement with Changhong Group, with both parties intending to sell 10% of Jiafeng's shares for one yuan.
The domestic business community was shocked to hear this news, not knowing what had happened. Some people privately said that Jiafeng had become too big and had foreign capital backing, so the government was putting pressure on Jiafeng to be nationalized.
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