The Industrial Giant Reborn

The meeting room of the general meeting of shareholders is located on the 11th floor of the Hutchison Building. Everyone inside is sitting in their own seats, and everyone is still chatting with each other. There are bustling voices on the venue.

At this moment, the door of the conference hall opened. After hearing the sound, everyone looked up subconsciously, but saw that two security guards opened the door first, and then a young Chinese and a white ghost walked in. Chen Zhiwen and Shen Bi.

Everyone immediately quieted down. These two are the most important people in the venue today. It can be said that they control half of the sky in Hong Kong. The two of them together seem to be reminding the people at the scene of their special significance.

According to the rules of the general meeting of shareholders, Hutchison’s board of directors or senior executives sit at the top, while Shen Bi sits at the bottom as a bank representative, and the position is naturally in the first row. Similarly, the representatives of other banks are the same, only the "most important" ones The shareholders sit in the back. When there are no major shareholders, even Qi Dezun, a wage earner, doesn't care much about these people.

Chen Zhiwen sat in the middle of the opposite side, and next to him were Hutchison Taipan Richard and Zhou Jiayang, and on both sides were British whites, both of whom were at the top of Hutchison.

"Everyone, thank you very much for coming to the shareholders' meeting of Hutchison Group. On behalf of all the employees of the company, I would like to thank all shareholders for their support to the company during this period of time." The speeches at the meeting were also in Cantonese. Although it was a British foreign company, most of the shareholders were Chinese, and not all the Chinese present could speak English. Many high-level people are so high-level that you don’t even need to look at them, and you don’t know that a foreigner will say it.

"Due to personal reasons, Mr. Qi Dezun, the former head of Hutchison, resigned ten days ago. In the future, I will be the head of Hutchison. At the same time, because he is optimistic about the future of Hutchison, Mr. Chen Zhiwen has become our major shareholder of Hutchison through investment. With 49.9% of Hutchison’s shares, we have invited him to become the chairman of Hutchison with the approval of the board of directors, and now we have specially declared for the general meeting of shareholders, and all shareholders are requested to agree.” Richard continued.

There was a sound of "buzzing" on the meeting place, everything was expected, becoming a controlling shareholder, of course he has to become the chairman, but the process still has to go, the appointment of the chairman still needs to be appointed by the shareholders meeting Permission, but this group of shareholders do not have the right to disagree, that is another matter.

The entire process took 5 minutes. All shareholders wrote down their approval or disapproval according to their shareholding ratio, and then submitted them in unison for review by the people present at the China Securities Regulatory Commission.

It’s just that even the people in the China Securities Regulatory Commission don’t care. This is obviously just a show. One person owns 49.9%, and another group of people may not necessarily have 30% in total, because not just a shareholder can come to the shareholders’ meeting. A certain shareholding ratio is required, and many Hutchison stocks are scattered in the hands of many small shareholders. In addition, some shareholders do not care about this general meeting of shareholders, or they have important matters of their own that cannot come. Therefore, the shareholders here , is only part of the remaining 50.1%.

How does this work? It doesn't work even if you are against it.

Witnessed by the staff of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, Chen Zhiwen won an overwhelming majority of votes in favor and became the chairman of Hutchison.

"Everyone, thank you for your support. I will definitely live up to everyone's expectations and make Hutchison better and better." Chen Zhiwen said with a smile.

This vote legally gave him the supreme right in Hutchison. Just having 49.9% of the stock is not enough, and there is no official certification.

"Chen Sheng, you are the major shareholder of Hutchison, and we agree to become the chairman of the board, but in the future, how will Hutchison operate? Does Chen Sheng have to give everyone an explanation? If the stock has fallen like this, can it go up again? , If it doesn’t work, just file for bankruptcy, Hutchison has so many assets, and we can get some money if we sell them all.” A middle-aged woman below said suddenly.

"Yeah, forget about filing for bankruptcy" followed by a group of booing voices, and many people became excited. Obviously, many people who support the idea of ​​filing for bankruptcy agree.

"Everyone." The voice of the microphone suppressed the noise of the scene, and Chen Zhiwen said: "It seems that Hutchison has a lot of assets on the surface, but these assets are actually the same as stocks. You can sell one or a few. The problem is basically the original price, but if they are all sold, the value of all will plummet. With billions of assets, who will take over in Hong Kong now?

Have you ever been in contact with real estate auctions? A house of 100,000 Hong Kong dollars can basically only be auctioned for 50,000 Hong Kong dollars. Do you think that after the assets of Hutchison are auctioned and the debts are deducted, can you still get even a penny?

According to the bankruptcy law, after bankruptcy, the capital and employee salaries come first, banks second, suppliers and partners third, and shareholders last. "

"Then what should we do?" After being told by Chen Zhiwen, many shareholders changed their minds.

"I am now the major shareholder of Hutchison. If Hutchison goes bankrupt, I will lose the most. I have naturally prepared the follow-up measures. Next, I would like to ask Mr. Richard to report the operating status of Hutchison in the latest quarter. Let me report it to everyone." Chen Zhiwen said.

In the original history, it was this group of shareholders who forced Qi Dezun to file for bankruptcy. History seems to be repeating itself, but if it is not for the prophetic ability, Hutchison's situation is really dangerous.

Richard had already prepared the materials, and spoke into the microphone the main business situation of Hutchison in an orderly manner.

Although this report has already been read, when Richard said it, Chen Zhiwen also felt the seriousness of Hutchison's problems. Of the 8 major listed companies under its umbrella, 7 of them lost money, and the only one that made a profit was Watsons, but the profit was also low. not much.

It happened that 7 of them lost money, and several of them were real estate companies. When the land price peaked in 1972, they received a lot of high-priced orders. As a result, the land price plummeted and the project had to be suspended.

Fortunately, the Hong Kong government knew the general situation of real estate companies, and acquiesced in the development of all real estate companies to default. Otherwise, if these lands were taken back by the Hong Kong government, Hutchison would go bankrupt immediately.

In addition to real estate, Hong Kong's port business is still profitable, but overseas Indonesian ports are too much dragged down, and the overall loss is serious. Harbor engineering, an infrastructure company, also suffered a lot of losses because it had no projects for a long time.

Other properties were rented out, and the rent also plummeted due to the sharp drop in land prices. In addition, Qi Dezun took these real properties as mortgages and owed a lot of debts, and the rental income could no longer keep up with the debts.

There are dozens of other businesses in total, all of which are products of chaotic acquisitions in Qi Dezun’s era. Some are actually not bad, such as a chain car sales company, but most of them are under chaotic management and are basically at a loss.

The entire Hutchison and its subsidiaries are facing huge debts. Qi Dezun mortgaged the property and then mortgaged the stock, and even walked some gray areas, mortgaged one asset to several companies to obtain funds.

Hutchison suffered such a serious loss because the debt interest was too high, which exceeded the profitability of Hutchison itself. In order to repay the loan, it had to continue to borrow from other banks or financial institutions, tearing down the east to pay for the west, but in the end everyone We all know about Hutchison's problems, so we have nothing to borrow, and the debt crisis erupts.

After listening to Richard's report, the shareholders below became even more excited. The current financial situation of Hutchison is even worse than that of the last shareholders' meeting. Even if a major shareholder came now, so what?

"Everyone, please be quiet." Chen Zhiwen suppressed the noise below with a microphone, and said, "Everyone knows the general situation of Hutchison, so at this shareholders' meeting, I hope that all our shareholders will inject 200 million Hong Kong dollars into the company together. "