Chapter 1358: Red Sohu's Great Change
"Shocked! This Tuesday morning, Wheelock Shipping submitted a voluntary delisting application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission...'
'Following the full payment of a fine of HK$11.5 million on March 27, Wheelock Shipping has undergone another major change...'
...
Wednesday, 10 April.
Xia Yu leisurely sipped his tea while browsing the newspaper.
An inexplicable smile was on his lips.
Yes, it was his doing that Wheelock Shipping had been privatised, only that the media had not reported it and no Chinese in Hong Kong knew about it.
After all, the main body of the privatisation was Australian Topland.
There were various considerations behind Xia Yu's decision to let Topland take the lead.
The most direct one is to save the cost of delisting.
The financial fraud of Wheelock Shipping Company has caused extremely far-reaching harm. If Xia Yu does not intervene more, the stock price of Wheelock Shipping Company will not recover for several years.
In the past March, the stock price of Wheelock Shipping Company was very low. At its lowest, the market value fell to HK$4.22 billion, which is less than 1.5 times the company's net assets.
In addition, because of the extremely high shareholding ratio of Top Leader in Wheelock Shipping, no institution is willing to speculate in this stock, and the trading volume is naturally stagnant.
However, if a company with the aura of Xia Yu's Jiuding Capital clearly dares to come forward to take over the shares, then the stagnant stock will definitely explode again. This is the appeal and influence of Jiuding Capital.
Xia Yu didn't want to look like he was being greedy, so the price of his involvement was an extra HK$1-2 billion. He had a lot of money, but it wasn't just handed to him, and he couldn't waste it like that.
It was perfect to let Frontier Corporation take over the privatisation, the cost was minimal and it wouldn't arouse any suspicions.
Second, Top Leader needs Wheelock Shipping to complement its international business. Since Top Leader is already his, it is also the best choice to let it completely absorb Wheelock Shipping.
Third, there are deeper considerations.
His prestige in Hong Kong is already at its peak, and secretly, I don't know how many people call him the king of Hong Kong. Some things are better to be done in moderation. Even if it is impossible to hide it from everyone in the future, it is still necessary to do some superficial work.
He has already overtly eliminated three of the four British consortia that originally ruled Hong Kong, and also incidentally took care of the Kadoorie family. Now if Wheelock is also completely swallowed up by him, that would be too much.
It is much more beneficial to let the company Toll Holdings take over. This company is Australian, and the Bright Foundation behind Toll Holdings is a British capital giant. If Xia Yu allows the Jiuding consortium to cooperate with Wheelock Shipping Company again, it will appear to the outside world to be a powerful alliance. Wheelock Shipping Company will fare better and be safer if it returns to being under the Jiuding consortium.
After all, the money will be in his hands no matter what, and there is essentially no difference. At most, he can buy some shares in the future to make it look good.
In the following half month, Wheelock Shipping repurchased all its shares at a price of HK$3 per share.
This price was slightly higher than the lowest share price in March, and on the surface it was not considered a bad deal. For investors, at least the shares they held were able to be unblocked.
Throughout the entire process of delisting and privatisation, Top Leading spent a total of HK$1,915,980,000.
With Wheelock Shipping in its hands, it also acquired the other five listed companies on the Hong Kong stock market.
Although these five companies were not privatised, control was completed.
Wheelock and Company holds 27.8% of United Dockyards, 38.2% of Hong Kong Property Trust, 42.7% of Lane Crawford Retail, 44.5% of Realty Development Corporation and 27.9% of the Cross-Harbour Tunnel.
The Jiuding consortium, on the other hand, privately holds 33.4% of the equity of these five companies.
Therefore, in reality, for these five companies, the shareholding ratios are 61.2% for United Dockyards, 71.6% for Property Trust, 76.1% for Lane Crawford Retail, 77.9% for Commonwealth Land, and 61.3% for Xiangjiang Undersea Tunnel.
Three of these companies have achieved absolute control, while the other two are still a little short.
Considering that both United Dockyards and Xiangjiang Undersea Tunnel have a strong strategic complementary role in his business landscape,
Xia Yu simply instructed his subordinates to increase their shareholdings in these two companies by 6% each, just above the absolute control line.
At this point, his Jiuding consortium was already deeply tied to Xiangjiang. Unless there were special circumstances, he would not easily privatise the company again, and would even continue to list some non-core companies in the future to promote the development of Xiangjiang's financial industry.
...
The beginning of 1985 was a watershed moment when the world changed dramatically.
In March, the eyes of the capital were drawn to Australia in the southern hemisphere, but the eyes of the political world were almost all focused on the world's largest alliance in the northern hemisphere.
On March 10, Konstantin Chernenko of the Red Soviet Union died of illness, having taken over the previous position for only 13 months.
The next day, the future famous Gorbachev was elected as the new leader of the USSR at the plenary meeting of the USSR with the support of Andrei and others.
A periodical reshuffle began within the USSR.
Countries in Europe and America did their best to find out the inside story of the USSR, and Xia Yu naturally paid attention to it as well, but he did not let Luo Wang take drastic measures.
Knowing the way things were going, he was not stupid enough to provoke the KGB on Red Soviet territory during this sensitive period, and only kept informed through the media.
More than a month passed.
Finally, on April 23, something extremely significant happened again in Red Soviet.
On this day, in Moscow, Red Soviet, more than a month after taking office, Ge completed the transfer of power and finally presided over the first plenary session of the Central Committee.
At the meeting, Gorbachev delivered a report entitled 'On Convening the 27th Regular Congress of the Soviet Union and the Tasks Related to the Preparation and Holding of the Congress', highlighting the problems in the Soviet Union and pointing out the overall trend of stagnation from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. He analysed the 'obstacle mechanism' affecting the development of the Soviet Union, and proposed a 'strategic concept for accelerating the country's socio-economic development' and the task of comprehensive reform.
The democratisation and marketisation of the Soviet Union finally announced to the world that it had begun!
This conference was praised by the media in Europe and the United States, and the countries of Europe and the United States gradually let out a sigh of relief.
Hongsu's choice of reform meant that it had chosen to ease relations with the West and other countries, and its foreign policy would also change.
As the intensity of competition between Hongsu and the United States eased, the global tension naturally eased.
As for Xia Yu, he finally reached the right time to lay out his plans for Hongsu.
So without further ado, he summoned his brother-in-law Ma Qianjun and, with a wave of his hand, once again allocated one billion Hong Kong dollars to Luo Wang as funding for its activities in the Red Soviet.
After that, Xia Yu provided Blackwater International in the United States with funding of 200 million US dollars and issued orders for the deployment in the Red Soviet.
After completing the deployment, Xia Yu boarded Elena's private jet, the Tulip, and flew to London...