Chapter 1461: The Rothschild Family Suffers Huge Losses

The night was cold and chilling.

In the study of the Li family mansion, halfway up Taiping Mountain, smoke filled the air.

Li Chaoren had once said that smoking was helping others waste their lives and money, so he never smoked.

But this time, his business had encountered its greatest crisis. The only person he could confide in was his son, so he hid in his study and smoked with his son to keep his mind calm.

'Dad, how much funding have you raised?'

Li Zekai, looking tired, asked hopefully.

Li Chaoren was silent for a long time, and then slowly said, '1.8 billion Hong Kong dollars!'

'Of this, 500 million was borrowed in the name of the Cheung Kong Group, and the remaining 1.3 billion Hong Kong dollars was borrowed in the name of the family fund, mortgaging the shares of the Cheung Kong Group.'

To borrow the 1.8 billion Hong Kong dollars, Li Chaosheng had to approach four banks. He didn't want to approach so many banks, but there was no other way. He wanted the money as soon as possible, so he could only approach Chinese banks. Foreign banks could not possibly lend him the money so quickly, and the mortgage rate would not be very high.

The four major Chinese banks in Hong Kong are Jinding Bank, Hang Seng Bank, Bank of East Asia and Bank of China Hong Kong, and the others are all medium-sized banks.

The Hong Kong Asia Commercial Bank, which he initially approached, is considered to be very advanced among medium-sized Chinese banks. It is only because of its strong strength that it can come up with HK$1 billion in working capital at once.

Other medium-sized banks hardly have the same strength!

What's more, he also approached some banks when he participated in the short bet this time, but these banks would never have lent him money, which greatly reduced his options.

Li Zekai asked again with concern, 'Dad, how much equity did you take as collateral?'

'I mortgaged 244,810,000 shares, 16.88% of the equity.'

'Now the family fund only holds 17.91% of the equity that is not mortgaged,'

Li Chaoren sighed after saying this.

He had only been able to borrow HK$1.3 billion with 16.88% of the Cheung Kong Group's shares as collateral.

Even if he pledged the remaining 17.91% of the shares, he would only be able to borrow HK$1.38 billion at the maximum pledge rate of 60%.

This was equivalent to 34.79% of the Cheung Kong Group's shares held by the Li family, and the maximum amount that could be borrowed as collateral was only HK$2.68 billion.

After taking the funds recovered from short selling and the original working capital and using them to pay compensation, there was still a shortfall of 3.47 billion Hong Kong dollars.

It was precisely for this reason that he had no choice but to take a desperate risk and use the name of the Cheung Kong Group to take out a mortgage, taking the collective funds of the Cheung Kong Group as his target.

'Dad, what is the attitude of the Rothschild family?' Li Zekai took a big drag on his cigarette, exhaled a smoke ring, and then said slowly.

On hearing the name of the Rothschild family, Li Chaokai could not help but let his veins bulge with anger, and he angrily said, 'Don't talk to me about the Rothschild family, they simply won't come to our aid when we're in trouble!'

'I called Evelyn Rothschild, and he shirked the responsibility by saying that he is currently short of funds, and asked me to wait for a week.'

'I went to Barclays Bank in Hong Kong, but I couldn't get a loan!'

'Hey...we're in a boat with thieves, and I blame myself for overestimating their strength.'

'This was once the Sixth Empire, heh...'

Li Zekai shook his head and analysed, 'It seems that they have suffered heavier losses than we have, and the amount could be ten times as much.'

'But I don't believe they would have no money in their hands. They must be saving their funds for self-protection. With Xia Yu's past tactics, he won't let go of the opportunity to strike while the iron is hot.'

'At the beginning of his rise, he was good at using the advantage of public opinion to attack his enemies, and the Rothschild family must be well aware of this.'

Li Superman was speechless as Xia Yu's past and his vast media empire came to mind.

'I hope he hasn't found out that we were involved...' Li Chao Kang said sadly, although his tone didn't sound very confident.

'He definitely hasn't!' Li Zekai said firmly, although it was unclear whether he really believed that or was just trying to reassure himself.

After those words, there was a long, two-minute silence in the study.

It wasn't until later, after Li Chaokai had extinguished a cigarette, that he said, 'For now, you need to keep those banks and institutions on your side. The contracts have all been signed, so repay them in batches over the next two days to avoid arousing their suspicions.'

'I'll find a way to solve the funding problem.'

Even though his securities company had already suffered heavy losses, there was still capital. He could temporarily liquidate some funds, recover some misappropriated funds, and then plug the hole later.

'Okay, Dad...'

...

Meanwhile, the Rothschild family in Europe was also in a state of deep concern.

Evelyn Rothschild, Léopold Rothschild, David Rothschild, Lister Rothschild, Elro Rothschild, Harry Rothschild, Sidney Rothschild, and the heads of the various European branches all hurried to the family estate in the UK.

The meeting was chaired by the head of the family, Jacob Rothschild.

'Brothers, first of all, I would like to apologise to everyone. I have messed up, and this time I am mainly responsible for the crisis the family is facing.'

Evelyn Rothschild was very manly, and stood up to apologise to everyone.

'Evelyn, you can sit down first. I also agreed to this plan, so you don't need to take the blame on yourself.'

'Today's meeting is not to blame you, but to properly overcome this crisis.' As the head of the family, Jacob Rothschild directly emphasised the theme of this meeting and did not want to waste unnecessary time.

After looking at Jacob Rothschild, Evelyn Rothschild lowered her head slightly and sat back down.

'Evelyn, you explain the situation to everyone so that they understand the situation,' Jacob Rothschild ordered as soon as he sat down.

'Okay, I'll explain the situation to everyone.'

'There were two stages to the attack on Hong Kong: short selling Hong Kong stocks and attacking Hong Kong foreign exchange. The second stage happened because we failed in the first stage and had to attack Hong Kong stocks again to try to turn the tables.'

'During the entire short selling of Hong Kong stocks, our family signed a total of 61.18 billion Hong Kong dollars worth of stock bet agreements. These 61.18 billion Hong Kong dollars worth of stocks were sold at different stages, and 58.65 billion Hong Kong dollars were recovered.'

'But after our failure, Hong Kong stocks were manipulated by long positions, so that we could not buy the stocks at all, and we had to default and pay compensation at 1.2 times the real-time stock price.'

'The total compensation, when added up, was as high as 107.54 billion Hong Kong dollars.'

'Plus the consumption during the implementation of the entire plan, our total loss was...'

At this point, Evelyn Rothschild paused for a moment, and when he found that everyone was looking at him, he sadly said, '52.5 billion 328.4 million Hong Kong dollars, equivalent to 8.61194 billion US dollars...'

Hearing this series of numbers, everyone was silent for a long time.

This loss is really too high!

This money definitely did not all go into the long positions' pockets, but most of it definitely did. As for how the long positions divided it internally, they had no interest in finding out.

They only knew that this loss of 8.61194 billion US dollars meant that the family was really in crisis.

To take out so much capital at once, even if the family had previously made more than 10 billion US dollars short selling international crude oil futures, it was still a huge pressure.

After all, although they had made more than 10 billion US dollars before, they were not stupid enough to hold it in their hands. They had already taken it out to invest, so how could they possibly expect to get it back in a few days?

And the compensation of 8.61194 billion US dollars had to be paid back in full in the next two days.

'This loss is too great...'

David Locher of France sighed.

'It really exceeded our expectations, and it's been a long time since we've had such a serious loss,' Swiss Harry Locher couldn't help but complain.

Evelyn Locher could only apologize repeatedly.

Jacob Locher knocked on the table to interrupt the emotional outpouring of the crowd: 'Okay, the loss is this much, and we are now calling a meeting for two purposes.'

'First, we must raise the money together to plug the hole.'

'Second, we must take defensive measures. Our enemy will definitely strike back, and it won't be long!'

'We don't have much time...'