Reborn as a tycoon in Hong Kong

On Friday, several things happened together.

First, Wei Li from Hutchison Whampoa took the team on a flight to London that day to conduct research and acquisition work on Hutchison Whampoa’s entry into the automotive industry.

Lin Baicheng personally sent Wei Li and others to the airport and gave Wei Li and others a few words of encouragement.

Due to time constraints, Lin Baicheng did not wait at the airport for the flight to take off before leaving. Instead, after encouraging the team, he left Kai Tak International Airport in an extended Lincoln.

After Lincoln left the airport, he did not go to any company under Lin Baicheng's name, but to the Wharf.

Wharf held a board meeting at 10:30 this morning to vote on the issuance of additional shares and the invitation to Lin Baicheng to become a shareholder of the company.

Because Bao Yugang hoped that Lin Baicheng could go to Wharf to show up and meet the directors, Lin Baicheng went to Wharf.

Although it still needs to be voted by the board of directors, Bao Yugang has told Lin Baicheng in private that the board of directors will definitely pass it. The voting is just a formality. He has already communicated with several major shareholder directors, and they all expressed their opinions on Lin Baicheng. Welcome to join.

"Lin Sheng!"

When Lin Baicheng and his men just walked into the Wharf, they saw Wu Guanzheng, Bao Yugang's second son-in-law, walking towards him.

"Wu Sheng!"

Lin Baicheng shook hands with Wu Guanzheng.

Wu Guanzheng said: "Dad is talking to several directors, and he asked me to pick up Lin Sheng."

"Actually, I can just go up there myself."

Lin Baicheng said politely. Looking at Wharf, he felt a little emotional. If Li Jiacheng hadn't stepped in, he would have acquired Wharf instead of Hutchison Whampoa. At that time, he would only have enough funds to deal with one company. Enterprises initiate acquisitions.

However, even if he originally acquired Wharf, Lin Baicheng was sure that Wharf's current market value would be tens of billions of Hong Kong dollars. He would still use Wharf's funds to do long gold futures, and the stock price would also be high after the company's investment made huge profits. rise.

The transformation of Wharf into Hutchison Whampoa did not change anything for Lin Baicheng himself, but it had a considerable impact on the other shareholders of the two companies. If small shareholders had been able to hold on to their shares, their value would have increased more than ten times.

Lin Baicheng followed Wu Guanzheng to the chairman's office, where Bao Yugang was chatting with three people. It seemed that these three people were directors of Wharf, and they were still on Bao Yugang's side.

There is a power struggle in every enterprise. Lin Baicheng is not sure if there are directors in Wharf who are against Bao Yugang, but even if there are, the other party will not be able to cause trouble. Bao Yugang has basically controlled Wharf.

"Lin Sheng, you are here."

Seeing Lin Baicheng and others coming in, Bao Yugang immediately stopped chatting with others.

"Bao Sheng!"

While Lin Baicheng shook hands with Bao Yugang, he looked at the other three people. He did not recognize these three people, and two of them were British.

Bao Yugang is different from Lin Baicheng. His relationship with British capital is not bad. This can be seen from the fact that he is a director of HSBC. Therefore, after he took over Wharf, the original directors did not reject him so strongly, and even some British capital The director took the initiative to approach him, and Bao Yugang happily accepted it.

Bao Yugang introduced the next three people to Lin Baicheng, and Lin Baicheng shook hands with them one by one and greeted them. Although he does not deal with British capital, they are the four major British capital families. It does not mean that he does not deal with all British capital. Hutchison Whampoa still cooperates with some British companies, even with subsidiaries of Jardine Matheson. cooperate.

Competitive rivalry is competitive rivalry, and business is business.

Soon after, Bao Yugang's secretary came to inform that the time for the board meeting was coming soon, and the group went to the conference room together.

When Lin Baicheng, Bao Yugang and others arrived at the conference room, almost all the directors were there. After waiting for another minute or two, the remaining two directors also arrived, and all the directors were present.

There are a total of nine directors of Wharf, among which Wu Guanzheng is also one of the directors of Wharf.

When the meeting was held, Bao Yugang first introduced Lin Baicheng to the directors, although he believed that all the directors present should know Lin Baicheng, and then briefly introduced the names and positions of each director to Lin Baicheng.

"Today I invited Lin Sheng to come here to attend the company's board of directors. That's because the company is planning to invite Lin Sheng to join the company and become one of the people here. To this end, I propose to issue 5 million additional shares of the company's stock to Lin Sheng and nominate Lin Sheng as the company's director." director."

What Bao Yugang said has actually been informed to all the directors in advance, so the directors present were not surprised or commented, and no one spoke out against it.

Wharf has a total of 90 million shares. If it issues an additional 5 million shares this time, it will be a total share capital of 95 million. The 5 million shares account for 5.263%, which is more than 5%. However, it is already a big share in Wharf. Shareholders.

Someone immediately said: "It is our honor to invite Lin Sheng to join us. I have no objection."

Then several more directors echoed and agreed.

"Sheng Bao, let me express my opinion first and welcome Lin Sheng to join. But I would like to ask, at what additional issuance price should we invite Lin Sheng to join?" someone asked.

"That's exactly what I'm going to say."

Bao Yugang said: "The stock price of our Wharf was initially as high as over HK$50 due to my acquisition of Wharf. Then it fell back all the way. In recent months, it has fluctuated between HK$26 and HK$30. .”

"Here we take a middle number, which is 28 Hong Kong dollars. This is the company's stock price currently recognized by the outside world, but we certainly cannot invite Lin Sheng to join us at such a price, so I think a 15% discount is more appropriate, and the price is 24 Hong Kong dollars per share. An additional 5 million shares were issued at the price of Hong Kong dollars."

This is the additional issuance price negotiated by Bao Yugang and Lin Baicheng. Although it has doubled compared with when Lin Baicheng wanted to acquire Wharf, the share price of Wharf was indeed undervalued at that time. In addition, the current price of Wharf The market value should go up because of the real estate industry, so Lin Baicheng does not think the price of HK$24 is overvalued.

As for Wharf, since Wharf's stock price has fluctuated between HK$26 and HK$30 in recent months, it means that the market believes that Wharf's stock price should be within this range, and Lin Baicheng is not cheap in terms of stock price calculation.

That is to say, a discount is given to Lin Baicheng for the additional issuance. However, the stock price of the additional issuance is usually lower than the company's current stock price. Otherwise, large funds can spend time and slowly buy from the stock market. If you buy low and sell high, you may be able to buy it cheaper. of stocks.

Some directors have no objection to the 15% discount, while others think it is too low and a 10% discount is more appropriate.

If directors have different opinions, Bao Yugang has to convince them. If it doesn't work, the board of directors will vote. That is the last resort.

Lin Baicheng watched silently from the side. He came to the board of directors this time with his ears in mind and would not express any opinions. Even if the board of directors did not approve him to buy shares in Wharf, he would not express his opinions because this is a Baoding company. Yugang's territory.

It was Bao Yugang who invited Lin Baicheng to invest in Wharf, so of course the matter must be left to Bao Yugang. Moreover, Lin Baicheng has no relationship with Wharf now, so he has no position to speak out.

In the end, Bao Yugang convinced the directors who had different opinions, and all directors unanimously approved the additional issuance proposal.

After the board of directors approved it, Bao Yugang stood up and said to Lin Baicheng: "Lin Sheng, welcome to join Wharf. We will work together from now on."

"Thank you Mr. Bao for your support."

Lin Baicheng also stood up, shook hands with Bao Yugang, and then said to all the directors: "I am very happy to be a member of Wharf. I believe that under the leadership of Bao Sheng, Wharf will develop more and more." OK, I will give my full support to Bao Sheng."

Lin Baicheng directly expressed his support for Bao Yugang. He had no intention of competing with Bao Yugang for Wharf. It was Bao Yugang who led him into Wharf. If he secretly coveted Wharf, his reputation would be extremely bad. , he would not do such a thing.

Unless one day Bao Yugang takes the initiative to give up control of Wharf to Lin Baicheng, then that's another story, but this possibility is basically non-existent.

After Lin Baicheng joined, Wharf now has ten directors. This is definitely not possible, so an additional director will be added to make the number of director seats an odd number. But how the other director arranges it is Bao Yugang's business and has nothing to do with Lin Baicheng.

Regarding his investment in Wharf, Lin Baicheng regarded it as a pure investment and he would not put any thought into this company.

After the board meeting, Lin Baicheng chatted with Bao Yugang and several other directors who were close to Bao Yugang, and then left. He doesn't know when he will come to Wharf next time. He will let others represent him for the director's seat, and he may not come in person to sign the contract.

At noon that day, Wharf announced Lin Baicheng's investment in Wharf. Such an important change in shares must be announced to the public.

What the outside world thinks of Lin Baicheng's investment in Wharf can be seen from Wharf's stock price that afternoon. After the stock market opened that afternoon, Wharf's stock price experienced a long-awaited surge. It rose by as much as 10% in half an hour, and it seemed that it would continue to rise before the end of midday.

Although Lin Baicheng's share purchase was at a 15% discount on the additional issuance price, Lin Baicheng's acquisition of Hutchison Whampoa has brought so many benefits to Hutchison Whampoa that the market has an expectation that Lin Baicheng will invest in Wharf, and feels that Wharf will be better after Lin Baicheng's investment. It develops better, so the stock price will naturally be speculated.

It can be said that before Lin Baicheng's contract to buy shares in Wharf was signed, he had already made money from this investment.

The share price of Wharf rose sharply, but the share price of Hutchison Whampoa, another company owned by Lin Baicheng, experienced two consecutive declines yesterday and today, and it was a relatively large two-consecutive decline.

Years ago, Hutchison Whampoa's stock price rose sharply due to its investment of more than one billion U.S. dollars. The highest price exceeded 140 Hong Kong dollars a year ago, which means the market value exceeded 60 billion Hong Kong dollars. The highest price rose to 143.8 Hong Kong dollars. At that time, Hutchison Whampoa’s total market value exceeded HK$63 billion.

However, later, because the New Year was approaching, investors needed money for the New Year, and the stock market was closed and needed to rest for many days, so the stock price fell in the last two trading days before the holiday, but the fall was not much at that time. The price closed at HK$137.02, and Hutchison Whampoa's total market value exceeded HK$60 billion.

The first trading day of the stock market after the holiday was Wednesday. Hutchison Whampoa's stock price fluctuated and closed with a slight increase of 0.6%, which was considered a good start.

But on Thursday, Xiangjiang learned the news that the international gold price had plummeted, and Hutchison Whampoa's stock price plummeted that day. Although Hutchison Whampoa is no longer long in gold futures, the market is irrational. When investors believe that gold prices will no longer rise, they believe that Hutchison Whampoa's future investments will no longer make money, and their original expectations are gone.

It was originally expected that Hutchison Whampoa would make a lot of money from its investment in the future. Now that these expectations are gone, investors naturally choose to sell the stock, and the stock price naturally continues to fall.

On Thursday, Hutchison Whampoa closed at HK$122.1, a sharp drop of 11.41%, which meant that Hutchison Whampoa lost more than HK$6 billion in market value on that day.

As of today, Hutchison Whampoa's stock price continues to fall. It has fallen by as much as 5% by the end of early trading. However, it seems that today's decline will not be as much as yesterday. After all, it is not rumored that Hutchison Whampoa has appeared in the investment field. Big loss.

What price Hutchison Whampoa will close at today depends on how the stock moves at midday.

Hutchison Whampoa's stock price has plummeted in the past two days. Lin Baicheng, as the boss, certainly knew that, but he, who was already reducing his shareholdings, knew that this was a sequelae of the previous surge, so he did not let the management stimulate the stock price and allowed the stock price to rise. Fall.

Another boss might try to stimulate the stock price so that the shares he wants to reduce can be sold at a higher price. However, for the sake of his own reputation, Lin Baicheng will not release good news to the outside world during the period when he is reducing his shares. Stimulate the stock price, lest the stockholders come back to crusade against him later and affect his reputation.

That afternoon, there was also a board meeting at Jardine Matheson.

Henry Kaiser proposed to acquire the telephone company, increase his shareholding, and gain control of the telephone company. However, this proposal was rejected by several directors, including two directors who had always supported the Kaiser family.

These vetoing directors believed that Jardine Matheson already owed more debt to banks and should not spend large amounts of cash to acquire other companies. Instead, the funds should be used to develop existing companies or choose to repay debts to reduce the burden.

Henry Kaiser realized that something was wrong, so he did not hold a directors' vote. Instead, he said that he would consider it again and directly shelved the bill for the time being. When the few directors who objected saw this, they did not pursue him fiercely and did not say anything.

Afterwards, Henry Caesar felt that something was wrong no matter what he thought. He went to find a director who was close to the Caesar family and played the friendship card, and finally found out the reason. It turned out that HSBC approached them and hoped that they could oppose the proposal to acquire the telephone company.

These directors also sought loans from HSBC for their own businesses, so they were unwilling to offend HSBC.

Henry Kaiserk, who learned the reason, did not blame these directors, but he believed that he needed to talk to HSBC's chief executive, Shen Chou, in person. He must know whether HSBC is very determined to acquire the shares of the telephone company, which is related to his attitude towards the telephone company.