Chapter 658: Amazing Profits

Upon hearing this, Giuseppe Eskenazi's breathing stopped for a moment, and a burst of hot blood rushed to his head.

'Damn it!'

He couldn't help but curse angrily.

Although he had guessed before the investigation that the enemy would try to hide, when the matter was confirmed, he still found it hard to accept, and his anger had nowhere to vent.

Heh! Since Xia Yu had decided to take action, and it was still in England, a place that was not his own territory, of course he would not give anyone the authority.

In order to distance himself from the matter, Xia Yu asked George Berkeley to step forward, and George Berkeley in turn asked a loyal subordinate to find five people they didn't know through a temporary worker of another shell company. These five were all bad gamblers with credit problems, and they didn't care about credit at all. As long as there was money, they were willing to do anything.

All Xia Yu had to pay was five deposits to enter Sotheby's auction house, ten thousand pounds each, which only cost fifty thousand pounds.

Of course, the 50,000 pounds were a total loss, but compared to the profits from short selling, the 50,000 pounds were just a drop in the bucket.

Giuseppe Aiskenazi took a deep breath to calm himself down, and with a cold face, he asked his cousin again, 'Robert, what is the current situation of the Chinese man named Hua Shengshi?'

Problems had arisen with the Chinese cultural relics he had offered for auction, and Giuseppe had immediately suspected Hua Shengshi the day before after calming down.

After all, with the sinister business he had been involved in, he had a guilty conscience, and when something went wrong, it was inevitable that he would suspect Huashengshi in a malicious manner.

Not to mention that before, he deliberately competed with Huashengshi for Chinese cultural relics, but Huashengshi simply backed down without any reaction. This had always seemed strange, but since nothing had happened before, he had not paid much attention.

Robert Eskenazi shook his head again in the disappointed gaze of his cousin: 'I had someone investigate. He spent most of this period of time in his shop, and even his employees rarely went out. Nothing suspicious was found.'

They didn't know that Xia Yu had bought Jumbo Treasure Pavilion. Previously, after Xia Yu's acquisition, it was still operated by Hua Shengshi. All that was needed for the change of ownership was a signature on paper. Jumbo Treasure Pavilion was not a listed company, so there was no need to announce this information to the outside world at all.

Giuseppe Eskenazi looked at Robert Eskenazi steadily, until the latter's face flushed with shame and he hung his head in shame.

'Hey...'

'You can't relax. Keep investigating. As soon as you find any key information, let me know immediately!'

'That's it, I'll go take care of some things.'

After dismissing Robert Eskenazi, Giuseppe Eskenazi immediately summoned the company executives and directors, intending to brainstorm again to solve the current difficulties.

Eskenazi Co., Ltd. is, after all, a public company. Although most of the shares are owned by the Eskenazi family, the company still has outside shareholders.

Now that Eskenazi Co. is on the hot seat and its share price has plummeted, some shareholders are already unhappy. He must appease them and enlist their support to tide the company over.

External problems are hard enough to solve, but there must be no internal problems!

...

At the headquarters of Bright Fund Company, Xia Yu sat in the chair of the chairman's office, going over the company's operating situation, which George Berkeley had submitted early this morning after arriving at the company.

After reading it, Xia Yu closed the document with a happy heart.

From the operating data over this period of time, Xia Yu could see that the company's development momentum was very good, and George Berkeley had not let him down.

George Berkeley used his previous connections to allow Guangming Fund to establish a good partnership with a number of major banks, borrowing a total of 50 million pounds, and then setting up a separate foreign exchange trading department to leverage the US dollar/pound exchange rate.

Over the course of two months, the pound had appreciated against the dollar, rising from 2.121 to 2.175. Bright Fund had made a profit of 22 million pounds, which was a very impressive result.

And this was all George Berkeley's own doing; Xia Yu had not given him any pointers.

This was what made Xia Yu most satisfied: an elite talent who didn't need him to worry about anything and could still make money for him was indeed hard to find!

In addition, the acquisition plan of Guangming Fund is also progressing smoothly. Through a number of offshore shell companies, it has acquired 3.72% of Standard Chartered Bank's shares and 4.21% of Royal Bank of Scotland's shares from the stock market.

One twelfth of the two-year plan has passed. Although the equity acquired in each bank is less than one twenty-fifth of the total equity, the amount of equity acquired is already quite large when you consider the number of shares that have been dispersed to ordinary shareholders and small and medium-sized investment institutions.

'Xi Xi, go and tell George to come here.'

'Okay!'

In a moment, George Berkeley, dressed in a suit and looking energetic, arrived at the office.

'George, sit down and talk!'

George Berkeley was told to sit on the sofa, and Xia Yu also got up from his seat and sat opposite him.

'I've looked at the data for this period of time, and you've done a very good job, you haven't let me down. Keep it up, and at the end of the year you'll receive a super big bonus!'

Xia Yu praised him with a smile, without first asking him any questions.

George Berkeley smiled, bowed slightly to Xia Yu, and thanked him, 'Boss, thank you for your generosity! This is what I should do!'

Xia Yu smiled and didn't say anything more. Anyway, his actions at the end of the year would give the strongest proof.

'How are the operations of Sotheby's and Eskenazi Limited?'

'Boss, through the short selling preparations in the early stages, the current floating profit has reached 19.6 million pounds, of which the short selling of Sotheby's auction house has a floating profit of 15.4 million pounds and the short selling of Eskenazi Ltd. has a floating profit of 4.2 million pounds.'

George Berkeley immediately reported several sets of data.

After handing over the operating situation to Xia Yu early in the morning, George Berkeley stayed in the short selling group dedicated to the two companies. These data were all newly compiled, and he was just able to answer fluently when Xia Yu asked.

The magnitude of the decline of the two companies flashed through Xia Yu's mind, and combined with the data reported by George Berkeley, he immediately calculated a rough figure: Bright Fund short sold the shares of the two companies, and the stakes in the bet were all around 20%.

Because of this, the combined decline of the two companies was close to 100 million pounds, and Bright Fund made a profit of nearly 20 million pounds.

However, 20% of the equity was not small, after all, excluding the shares held by controlling shareholders and de facto shareholders, and then excluding the shares left in the hands of ordinary shareholders, the maximum equity in the hands of institutions was only 30%, or even less.

To be able to find two-thirds of these 30% of the equity to bet against, the ratio was already quite high. Without a certain ability to deceive, it would be difficult to bring these financial elites into the pit.

It has only been a short half month since the layout, but nearly 20 million pounds in profits have been made, which is terrifying yet seems normal.

After all, the profit from short selling is inherently greater than that from long selling.

Xia Yu knows that in the US financial market, the two giants, the Morgan and Rockefeller families, like to short sell the most, and in order to reap profits, they will use all kinds of resources, and even resort to underhanded tactics.

In his previous life, many large Chinese companies were listed on the US stock market, and many of them were targeted, often resulting in profits of billions of dollars. How could the big predators of Wall Street not be tempted?

Even the large A-shares in his next life... With the memories of those big shots, Xia Yu knew very well the truth from 2015 to 2016 that was unknown to the general public.

It's enough to make one sigh.

Forget it, his past life has nothing to do with him anyway, and in this life, he, the butterfly, is getting stronger and stronger. The course of China and the world has already changed, and the future is already unpredictable. It's just going to cause him more trouble if he thinks about it now!

Xia Yu shook his head, clearing irrelevant thoughts from his mind, and looked at George Berkeley, asking in a three-part question:

"How many shares were sold, how many of the shares for the bet did we keep, and how many were acquired in the market?'