In the afternoon of the same day, Li Jianhui held a high-level meeting of the Xinjian Department at Wheelock Building, attended by senior executives of the four major groups and general managers of major subsidiaries.
The senior executives who walked into the conference room all had extremely serious faces. They knew what happened in the morning. This was a serious provocation to the Xinjian Department. If the Xinjian Department did not respond, I am afraid that the other party would get worse.
Xin Jian belongs to the four major groups. Wheelock + Hutchison Whampoa alone are enough to rival the Jardine Matheson Group. Although HSBC is powerful, if Huihong Group is listed, with its terrifying performance of nearly 100 million Hong Kong dollars in monthly profits, Xin Jian will definitely be able to make Xin Jian a success.
It has become the largest financial group in Hong Kong.
They were not prepared for other people's troubles, and they did not expect that others would come to bully them. They really thought that their efforts to establish a relationship were just a piece of cake.
The senior executives of the Xinjian Department were all holding their breath, especially the senior executives of the Xinjian Group, knowing that this time the other party was using them as an excuse.
After Li Jianhui took his seat, Chen Yulian once again introduced what happened this morning to the senior officials present.
As soon as Chen Yulian finished speaking, the venue became noisy, and everyone was filled with indignation, saying that this time they must not let it go, and the people behind it must pay the price.
Li Jianhui knocked on the table, and after everyone calmed down, he said: "It is rude to come and not reciprocate. Since the other party makes us uncomfortable, we must also keep them awake.
We are an enterprise, so we should repay each other in an enterprise way. Currently, the major subsidiaries of the Jardine Matheson Group include real estate Jardine Land, Heung Kong Dairy Company, retail Wellcome, hotel Mandarin Oriental, Jardine Shipping, Jardine Securities, etc.
We start from retail. Lane Crawford, a subsidiary of Wheelock, and Watsons, a subsidiary of Hutchison Whampoa, have joined forces to give you four days, starting next Monday, to fully squeeze the market of Wellcome Supermarket in Xiangjiang. Weili will coordinate and be responsible for this.
The battle for the sub-retail market.”
As for Li Jianhui entrusting him with such an important matter, Wei Li was moved to trust Li Jianhui, but he also felt great pressure.
The outcome of this operation will have a great impact on whether he can gain a foothold in the Xinjian Department. If he wants to become the helmsman of one of the four major groups of the Xinjian Department, he must show his ability to convince these senior executives.
The oral results were obviously a test for him.
Fortunately, Li Jianhui gave him a lot of rights. During the Wellcome period, both Lane Crawford and Watsons must strictly follow his arrangements.
Moreover, Li Jianhui also allowed the two major retail companies to become unprofitable for one year, so that he could confidently and boldly enter into a price war with Wellcome.
This time it is not just targeting Jardine, but Li Jianhui, another giant behind the scenes, will not make it easy for the other party.
Swire & Co., Ltd. mainly owns real estate, aviation, beverages, marine services, and trading industries. Li Jianhui went directly to Cathay Pacific.
Li Jianhui will personally come forward and contact Li Guobao, Lei Juekun, Feng Jingyao, Feng Jingxi and others, and they will jointly apply to establish a new airline to break Cathay Pacific's monopoly in Hong Kong.
At the same time, Li Zaiwei was ordered to start sniping at Xiangjiang Aircraft Engineering Company in the stock market, and if possible, acquire this aircraft maintenance and modification company with a low market value but first-class technology.
As for HSBC, Li Jianhui could only write down that at present, in terms of financial strength, Xinjian Group is not strong enough to compete with HSBC, even if all the alliances combined are not enough.
As for grabbing each other's business, it's not easy at the moment. HSBC has supported a lot of people over the years, especially after Shen Bi took office. These people will not leave HSBC aside easily.
In order to counterattack this time, Li Jianhui specifically used his Hutchison Whampoa shares as collateral to borrow HK$500 million from the Bank of East Asia to acquire Heung Kong Aircraft Engineering Company.
At the same time, it also allows Wheelock Group to speed up the spin-off and listing of Wheelock Land, and also speed up the cooperation between Whampoa Rudder Company and Wheelock Shipping Company to prepare for future mergers.
These senior executives also understood Li Jianhui's intention. Wheelock Group and Hutchison Whampoa Group may reorganize several major groups in the future, one is shipping, the other is retail, and the third is real estate.
In the future, the major groups of the Xinjian Group will not be too cluttered, and will all have a focus for development. Unlike Wheelock and Hutchison Whampoa now, which span multiple industries, the focus of development is unclear, and top management is extremely inconvenient.
Li Jianhui has always acted vigorously and resolutely. Now that he has made a decision, he will not delay it. Chen Yulian was a guest at Jiashi's live broadcast room that night to condemn the incident that happened in Wheelock Plaza in the morning on behalf of Xinjian Group.
They also publicly accused the British-funded consortium of manipulating this incident behind the scenes. Their purpose was to suppress the rising Li Jianhui and ensure that several major foreign banks could continue to dominate the Hong Kong business community as they had for the past century.
At the same time, he said that Xinjian Group has always abided by laws and regulations, and is not afraid of shadows or any conspiracy.
In addition, he criticized certain industries in Xiangjiang that are monopolized by British-funded consortiums, especially aviation, electricity and other industries. He hoped that the Xiangjiang government could relax restrictions so that Chinese-funded companies in Xiangjiang can compete fairly with British-funded consortiums.
Chen Yulian also said that the Xin Jian Department was born in Hong Kong, rose in Hong Kong, and will be in Hong Kong in the future.
Xiangjiang is Li Jianhui's home, and the Xinjian industry is Xiangjiang's own enterprise. Whether it is Huihong Group, Xinjian Group, or even Wheelock and Hutchison Whampoa, the registration places and headquarters of these groups are all in Xiangjiang.
Chen Yulian's remarks on Jiashi caused great shock in Hong Kong. Many newspapers revised their pages late at night, and some asked questions about the incident outside Defeng Building on their front pages.
Some question the fairness of the Xiangjiang government and hope to liberalize those industries monopolized by British-funded consortiums so that Chinese-funded companies can have a platform for fair competition.
At the same time, the front page headline of Jiayi Daily was the news that Li Jianhui joined forces with Li Baoguo and others to apply for an airline company, echoing the news of many newspapers.
All kinds of public opinions were awash for a while. As MacLehose listened to the report from the intelligence department, he felt very anxious.
He knows very well that if this kind of public opinion continues to spread, it is likely to cause confrontation, and it will not be so easy to calm it down.
In particular, the North is becoming more and more concerned about this side, and now the two sides are communicating privately on the Hong Kong issue.
According to the plan, he will go north in a few months. If there is really a big disturbance, what confidence will he have to negotiate with the high-level officials in the north?
And if things get too big, I'm afraid he will be immediately dismissed from his post in London and will have no future at all.
At this time, he could only contact Li Jianhui, Shen Bi, Nubigian and others to ask everyone to work together and set some rules. Fighting will be a fight, but it must be controlled within a certain range and must not create social opposition.
Hong Kong is a fair society, and the government is absolutely not biased towards any party, and has no intention of restricting Chinese capital.
Regardless of whether it is true in private, at least on the surface, this is the government's principle, and this is also a card he uses to deal with the northern high-level officials.