Henry Keswick did not make Li Guangyu wait any longer. He replied to Li Guangyu on the afternoon of the next day and asked several of their major investment companies to arrange personnel to go to Jardine Matheson Group to negotiate the value of Milk International Company and agree to Li Guangyu's shareholding plan.
This time, Jardine really does not want to continue to be hostile to the Li Group in Xiangjiang. They know very well that if this continues, Jardine will probably be completely squeezed out of the Xiangjiang market by the Li Group.
Jardine Group has always regarded Xiangjiang as the foundation of the group. If the Xiangjiang market is lost, it will be a huge blow to Jardine.
This time, Li Guangyu showed goodwill to them. Both Henry Keswick and his cousins, the Jardine family, were willing to end the previous hostility and cooperate in some aspects.
Moreover, the capital chain of Jardine Group is already very scarce at present. The transfer of 40% of the shares this time can effectively alleviate the difficulties currently faced by Jardine Group.
Since taking over the Jardine Matheson Group for more than a year, Henry Keswick has been facing huge pressure from the Lee Group, which has made him never relax. He is always worried about which of his companies will be in trouble again.
Facing suppression and targeting from the Li Group.
Now he can finally relax and develop the Jardine Group's industry safely. Henry Keswick still understands some of Li Guangyu's character. As long as he is willing to cooperate with you, then he will not stab you in the back.
knife.
Moreover, there are currently no properties in the Jardine Group that the Li Group is concerned about anymore. Li Guangyu doesn’t care about the Jardine Land Group at all. They also have shares in Milk International Company, and there are also many trading companies, the Li Group and its interest groups.
, as for the hotel group, the Peninsula Hotel currently belongs to their interest group.
Henry Keswick felt sad when he thought about the companies that Jardine Matheson Group had lost in the past few years. The era when the four major foreign companies dominated Hong Kong was completely gone forever.
Hutchison Whampoa and Wheelock Group were successively acquired by Lee's interest group, and Swire Holdings was left half in ruins. If Li Guangyu hadn't looked down, Swire Holdings would have been gone, and Swire Group would have had to withdraw from Hong Kong in disgrace.
The market is up.
Jardine Matheson Group is not much better than Swire. Wharf, Heung Kong Telephone Group, Heung Kong Electric Group, and Wellcome Supermarkets were transferred and closed down one after another, causing Jardine to suffer huge losses.
Fortunately, the Li Group seems to feel that Xiangjiang would not be well off without their British-funded group. Now it seems to have put an emergency brake on the situation and is preparing to cooperate with them, so that the Jardine Group can still have a chance to rise.
However, he also knows that it is no longer possible to return to the glorious era. In the future, Hong Kong will only be the era of the Lee Group. Next, the Jardine Group will compete with Cheung Kong, Zhao Ke, Sun Hung Kai and other groups.
The position of the second group.
However, Henry Keswick allowed the Lee Group to invest in Dairy Milk International, which made HSBC Chairman Shen Bi very unhappy. They, HSBC and Standard Chartered, supported Jardine Matheson Group so much because they hoped that Jardine Matheson Group could stand in front and help them withstand Lee Matheson Group.
pressure from the financial group.
Now that Jardine Matheson has also cooperated with the Lee Consortium, HSBC and Standard Chartered will be the direct rivals of the Lee Consortium in Hong Kong in the future. The Lee Consortium will never give up suppressing them before they obtain the right to issue Hong Kong currency notes.
of the two major banks.
Shen Bi knew Li Guangyu's personality very well, and he would never give up until his goal was achieved.
Just as he wanted to establish an airline in Hong Kong, when the government encountered difficulties in applying, they would think of directly acquiring Swire Pacific, the parent company of Cathay Pacific Airways.
Shen Bi could not guarantee whether Li Guangyu would do this regarding the right to issue Hong Kong dollar notes. The Li Group had enough funds and strength to acquire Standard Chartered and HSBC, and Li Guangyu dared to do so.
Moreover, both HSBC and Standard Chartered have experienced a sharp decline in market value in the stock market due to the current situation in Hong Kong. Once the Li Group makes a bargain-hunting acquisition, I don’t know if the major shareholders behind them can withstand it.
Shen Bi was at a loss as to how quickly the situation in Hong Kong was changing. After he became the chairman of HSBC, he still felt that the British consortium was strong, so he made friends with some Chinese families and gave them some support.
Even in the acquisition of Hutchison Whampoa, he deliberately favored the Chinese-owned families. He did not expect that the situation would turn around so quickly. In just a few years, the four major British-owned foreign banks had completely lost their ability to compete with the Chinese-owned consortium.
As HSBC and Standard Chartered stand apart from other major groups, they have to worry about whether they will follow in the footsteps of these major foreign banks.
With the Jardine Matheson Group no longer as its enemy, the Lee Group can wholeheartedly deal with its two major banks in Hong Kong. Facing the current Li Group, even Standard Chartered and HSBC, which are known as the shadow central bank of Hong Kong, are somewhat unable to withstand it.
Shen Bi contacted George Lavin of Standard Chartered Bank by phone and asked him to have lunch to discuss the future situation with him.
In a box of a teahouse in Central, Shen Bi and George Lavin sat opposite each other. Shen Bi said with emotion: "More than a year ago, when we faced the Li Group, there were also the Shwaiya family and the Keswick family. We have been discussing with the Marden family, and now there are only two of us. I don’t know if there will be no one to discuss in the future.”
In the more than a year since George LaVine came to Hong Kong to take over Standard Chartered Bank, he just felt that he had jumped into a big hole, and nothing was going to his liking.
The main business of Standard Chartered Bank is companies owned by British-funded consortiums. Over the past year or so, British-funded consortium companies have been continuously acquired by Chinese-funded families, causing their business to continue to decrease. Standard Chartered Bank's operating rate in Hong Kong has jumped off a cliff. of decline.
Today's decision by Yihe made him very angry. Like Shen Bi, he was very aware of the current situation in Xiangjiang. The next step was for Standard Chartered and HSBC to face Li's consortium. He didn't know whether Standard Chartered could resist Li's consortium this time. The attack by the financial group.
Fortunately, what reassures him is that the largest individual shareholder of Standard Chartered is Qiu Deba, who is one of the core members of the Singapore consortium. At present, the Singapore consortium and the Lee consortium are already in a cooperative relationship. The Lee consortium should not Attack them first.
George Lavin said: "Shen Bi, there is nothing we can do about this. The Li Group is no longer something that the British-funded group in Xiangjiang can resist. I don't think our two banks can withstand the financial pressure of the Li Group." Expansion. Especially since there are so many shareholders behind our two banks, and they are also very complicated. The Li Group is not short of money. Our bank still has such a large amount of money. Just here, the Li Group You can make billions of Hong Kong dollars in profit."
How could Shen Bi not know this? When HSBC was founded, it had only fifteen shareholders. Later, although foreign shareholders gradually withdrew, HSBC was now controlled by British people.
However, the number of shareholders has not decreased now. Based on the acquisition practices of the Li Group in recent years and their strong financial resources, it is hard to say whether HSBC can keep Shen Bi by then.
Shen Bi said: "Lavin, I hope that our two families will strengthen communication and cooperation in the financial aspect in the future. At present, our biggest enemy is the Li Group. We cannot fight each other like before."
In the past, when Xiangjiang had no other competitors, HSBC and Standard Chartered were basically on two separate fronts. Cooperation between the two companies was simply impossible. In order to compete for Xiangjiang's customers, both companies would engage in fierce competition.
HSBC and Standard Chartered both use Xiangjiang as their main base and Asia as their important market, which has led to them accumulating countless grievances over the past few decades.
If the Li Family Group hadn't risen too fast, making the two families feel a huge threat, it would have been impossible for them to communicate and cooperate.
George LaVine also knows that if Standard Chartered and HSBC cannot continue to fight like this, they must fully cooperate to deal with the pressure brought by the Lee Group.