The Industrial Giant Reborn

With the establishment of Yanjing Jeep, Chen Zhiwen's investment plan in the mainland has come to an end for the time being. First, because of this market, there are not many opportunities suitable for foreign investment at present, and most fields are not open to the outside world. The investment is entirely to enter this market first, and the rest is just to use the cheap labor in the interior to produce the simplest light industrial products.

The next best time is after 1984. After the big leaders see the economic achievements of the Shenhai Special Zone and the Shekou Industrial Zone, they will further open up more special zones, and foreign investment will be more welcome. At the same time, the domestic economy It will be much better than it is now.

This happened to avoid the most turbulent years of 1982 and 1983, and one's own funds could also be used in Hong Kong's economic crisis, taking advantage of the sharp drop in the stock market and land prices, to start with a substantial amount.

As the first joint venture factory in China, and capable of promoting the improvement of the domestic automobile industry chain, Yanjing City attaches great importance to this project. On the third day after the contract was signed, all relevant people within the scope of land acquisition came with the help of the government. Now, they moved out of their own homes, many construction machinery can also enter, and thousands of workers have also started to build short-term living places nearby, and everyone is moving.

After the visit, Chen Zhiwen was also very satisfied with the speed. However, as a conscientious capitalist, Chen Zhiwen paid for it alone and sent a red envelope to everyone, not much, 100 Hong Kong dollars per person. , I bought 30 tons of bacon and salted chicken, and everyone can share about ten catties, and bring them home, maybe they can eat them until the New Year.

As for the more than 300 households in the two villages that needed to be relocated due to the construction of the factory, Chen Zhiwen also sent bacon and coal. I have prepared well, but after all, it is still not as good as my own home, and there are related compensations, but considering that the temporary residence may not be so good against the cold, so I sent some more coal, otherwise, if there is not enough coal, in the cold winter. , It’s not just something you can buy with money. The winter in the 1980s was much colder than it would be 40 years later. Even in the south, people can easily leave the river.

Chen Zhiwen won't ask too much about other professional matters, he just needs to know the approximate time point. Considering what RCA has done in Wanwan, sometimes the people under his command may make their own decisions, so he told them many times After paying attention to environmental protection issues, Chen Zhiwen left Yanjing.

Time soon arrived in early 1982.

With the help of several investment banks, Henry Morgan locked up about 21% of the RCA stock, costing about 700 million US dollars, which also consumed most of Henry's cash assets and owed some debts. For Chen Zhiwen, it is not a big amount of data, but it is also a huge sum of money for Henry.

However, the good news is that it is now smoother than the estimated plan. As a traditional industry, RCA has been gradually abandoned by investment companies.

And relying on the 21% shares locked in his hands, Henry Morgan met with several powerful leaders of the Morgan family after New Year's Day. After some negotiations, the Morgan family also decided to support Henry. After all, one of the three major TV stations in the United States Well, no consortium would think this is unimportant, and over the years, the status of the Morgan family in the United States has declined a bit, and there is an urgent need for more companies with greater influence.

In the case that Henry already owns 21% of the shares, the Morgan family also knows that it is impossible to take away this interest as an internal member of the family, and it is unlikely to bypass it.

Thus, an alliance was formed.

Next, the Morgan family sent people to Wanwan, but they did not have any contact with RCA, but to discuss the possibility of cooperating with the Wanwan government. For example, some entities of the Morgan consortium could consider investing in Wanwan, and Morgan’s banks also wanted to invest in Wanwan. It can be considered to carry out large-scale borrowing in Wanwan, or participate in the financing of infrastructure construction, assist Wanwan company to go public in the United States, or act as a matchmaker to guide some American technology companies to cooperate with Wanwan, etc.

Everything sounds huge, but it is also a plan. Whether it can be implemented in the end is another matter, and these cooperations are actually very feasible, that is to say, even if it is not for RCA Well, these projects themselves can also be profitable. Naturally, the Morgan family does not do business at a loss. If they find out that the profits may be high after talking, then they will really invest.

Although the size and influence of the Morgan family in the United States have not been as large as in the 1930s over the past few decades, they are still huge. Such a large consortium suddenly showed an attitude of interest in Wanwan, which naturally flattered the Wanwan government. Wanwan, like the mainland, puts economic development first. Under such a big pie, they naturally took the bait and sent a huge business team to connect with the Morgan family.

The contact between the two parties was also very smooth. The first one to invest in Wanwan was a small beverage company in North America. They reached an investment intention within a week. They were willing to invest in a beverage factory in Taoyuan City, taking advantage of the high-quality environment of Taoyuan City to produce beverages for the US market.

Although the investment is not large, but the speed is so fast, it still gives the Wanwan government hope for the future. If everything goes well, then this year (1982), the Wanwan government can get more than one billion US dollars from the Morgan family. Investment, this is no less than RCA ten years ago, an absolute achievement.

Chen Zhiwen also knew everything, and was very satisfied with Morgan's operation. Only this kind of large consortium in the United States is capable of doing this kind of thing. When the right time is right, it will be detonated suddenly. The rest is to besiege .

Soon, the time will be the year.

An unexpected, but reasonable thing happened.

The American Fortune magazine announced this year's Asian Person of the Year, and the winning bidder was naturally Chen Zhiwen.

"Fortune" magazine was first published in the United States. Henry Morgan knew about it first, so he called Chen Zhiwen directly.

In the mainland of later generations, Forbes has a greater reputation, mainly because of its "Forbes Ranking List". In the early 1980s, the globally recognized financial magazine was "Fortune", and the ranking list it launched As early as 1954, it began to push the world's top 500 companies.

However, in the 1950s and 1970s, it was very difficult to inquire about a company’s status. The easiest way was to use listing information instead of a listed company. Unless it was very large, it would not attract the attention of Fortune. .

Chen Zhiwen's selection is naturally the reason why his two companies, Red Bull and Midea, are the best sellers in the world.

Red Bull is a little bit better. Although the profit margin is high, it takes a high-end route. Most people generally don’t drink it. This makes the total market not big. At least compared to Coca-Cola, I’m afraid it’s very small. One of the scales is not there, and the beverage industry is not very interesting, and Red Bull's finished products are not sold in a centralized manner. It is estimated that it will be difficult to arouse the interest of "Fortune".

But Midea is different. In the past few years, its monopoly position in the arcade market has made many colleagues envious. However, after all, arcade is only a very small market. Giant companies are far behind, but red and white phones and handheld game boys are selling well all over the United States, with huge sales, not to mention Fortune magazine, even an ordinary reporter can find out, and Midea has started to enter the computer field again, so any One cannot ignore its terrifying influence.

Of course, the same is true for Costco. The company’s expansion speed in the United States is astonishing, and it has become one of the small retail giants that cannot be underestimated in the American market.

Although there is no Internet, once the breaking news in the United States is released, the whole world will basically know it quickly. The next day, the newspaper media in Hong Kong published the news on the front page, but they have not yet received the Fortune magazine. The original copy, but Chen Zhiwen had already obtained it, and Henry Morgan immediately arranged for someone to take the nearest flight to send the magazine to Hong Kong.

The content of "Fortune" is naturally all in English, which is not a problem for Chen Zhiwen. His English is not bad, and after so many years of study, as long as it is not a professional vocabulary, he will not have any problems reading articles. Besides, although some of the content in "Fortune" magazine is also very professional, the words used to attract people's attention are relatively simple.

After all, the languages ​​of the world, including a few languages ​​such as Chinese, can use the original vocabulary to create new words, while Western languages ​​must create new words. From the perspective of technological development, Western languages ​​​​are all stupid languages, because a person It takes a lot of energy to learn your own professional vocabulary.

At noon that day, Chen Zhiwen came to the company after having lunch at home, and sat in a sun room located on the highest floor of the Xinghe Building. The winter sun is very soft, and it is very comfortable to bask in. In the sun room, you don’t need to turn on the air conditioner to keep warm temperature.

The front page of "Fortune" magazine is Chen Zhiwen's photo, which is a bit blurry, and it is obviously taken from other places. Over the years, Chen Zhiwen has also participated in many activities that will be exposed, such as invitations from the Hong Kong government, large-scale auctions, Banquets of rich people in Hong Kong, annual meetings or important gatherings of their companies, and some events in the United States, many public events, there will always be many people taking pictures, and these will also flow out, but this is also normal, huge wealth It cannot be concealed, after all, the huge amount of transactions, the employment of hundreds of thousands of people, every move will attract countless attention.

"Fortune" first counted Chen Zhiwen's wealth in the United States, and the focus was naturally on Costco, one of the US retail giants that has publicly raised funds. The last valuation was US$1.5 billion. I know that Costco has increased its debts on a large scale in order to expand, especially in the first-tier cities. Although the overall turnover is higher, the average single-store turnover has declined. At the same time, Costco has also begun to enter smaller cities. Anyone with a little experience in analysis knows that Costco's model is most suitable for large cities. The smaller the city, the lower its profitability.

Therefore, the rapid expansion has made some people ignore this special model that is only suitable for big cities. Another point is that Costco is consulting with several satellite companies and plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to launch a satellite into space. This matter Many people can't understand it, and even because of this, some funds that once invested in Costco intend to sell their stocks.

But there is also a good point of view, that is, apart from Wal-Mart’s Sam’s Club, other large supermarkets have entered warehouse-style supermarkets, and the results are not satisfactory. Although they are still persisting and even expanding, everyone can see their weak state. Sam Membership stores are very good, but Wal-Mart is also on the road of rapid expansion, and temporarily does not have a strong investment capacity for the growth of Sam's Club.

After many considerations, "Fortune" set the current valuation of Costco at 2 billion US dollars. The current share allocation of Costco is 70% for Chen Zhiwen, 20% for the management team headed by Pierce, and the previous financing At that time, foreign capital obtained 10% of the shares.

That is to say, for Costco alone, Chen Zhiwen has assets of 1.4 billion US dollars, but "Fortune" also stated that because this is an unlisted company, how much debt is owed and whether there will be other shareholders, etc. None of them are public, and the data in this area can only be used as a reference.

In Hong Kong, the only two large-scale listed companies under Chen Zhiwen are Wharf and Hongkong Electric. The current market value is about 4.5 billion Hong Kong dollars and 2.5 billion Hong Kong dollars. Chen Zhiwen probably controls about 40% of the shares, worth about 600 million US dollars.

Hutchison is a non-listed company. It has investments overseas and in the mainland. However, Fortune seems to be not optimistic about its investment in the mainland, especially the Beijing-Tianjin-Tang Expressway. The investment in this project is huge. It will be as high as hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars. Therefore, Fortune only recognizes the value of Chen Zhiwen, the most valued company under its banner, at 500 million dollars.

As for Xinghe Group, the scale of its trading company is indeed large enough, but the profit margin is extremely low. This point was also found by "Fortune", and the valuation is only 200 million US dollars. But this point is almost the same. Although Galaxy Trading has a huge turnover, it not only supplies to Costco and Wal-Mart, but also becomes the supplier of Celtic, Sears and some large supermarket companies in Europe by virtue of its extremely high cost performance. At present, the monthly turnover exceeds 150 million U.S. dollars, but the profit is indeed very low, basically controlled at about 1-2%. This purpose is also to learn from Coca-Cola and reduce the cost to the extreme. No one else can do anything Step in and gradually expand the scale.

As for some properties owned by Galaxy Group, "Fortune" has not counted them, because these are non-public transactions, and they are far away in Hong Kong. The reporters in the United States may not be willing to investigate so deeply.

The most worthy of attention are Red Bull and Midea, but the news of these two companies is completely closed, especially Red Bull, although outsiders know that its profits are high, but the long-term advertising investment also makes "Fortune" not sure whether it is currently available. Profitability, but still bullish on the beverage company, valued at $500 million (Coca-Cola is around $4-5 billion at this point).

For Midea, it is obviously much stronger, especially the popularity of arcade machines, home game consoles, and handhelds, and the degree of huge profits. Anyone who is an electronics major understands it. Relatively speaking, other personal computers, home appliances, and automobiles The spare parts business is just a child's play, although any of these, if it becomes a company independently, can also become a large company in Hong Kong.

"Fortune" valued Midea at US$2.5 billion, which obviously underestimated the value of Midea. You must know that in the past six months, Midea earned US$620 million from the game business alone. According to US listed companies Judging from the financial report data, it has surpassed General Electric.

Of course, the technical capabilities are far behind, and Midea simply captures people's demand for video games.

But even if it is underestimated, such a market value is second only to several giants in Japan in Asia, and in the United States, it can also be ranked among the top ten in the electronics industry.

Finally, "Fortune" also stated that when Chen Zhiwen made his fortune in Hong Kong, he had mastered a large number of properties, but later sold them. I don't know where the funds went. They may have been used as internal funds for other companies, or they may have invested in other companies. At the same time, "Fortune" also found that Chen Zhiwen had signed a lot of bank debts, but the details were not clear. Therefore, in the end, "Fortune" set Chen Zhiwen's net worth as between 4.5 and 5 billion US dollars, officially replacing the previous one. Bao Yugang from China and Wang An from the United States have become the richest Chinese in the world.

On the third day, the relevant information of "Fortune" magazine spread to Hong Kong, and all the contents were published in the newspaper, and the public opinion in Hong Kong suddenly exploded.