New Year's Day is a rest day, but all employees at the Xinjian Holding Group headquarters work overtime.
On this day, the headquarters of Xinjian Holdings was officially transferred to Wheelock Building in Central to Xinjian Building on Tung Wah Road.
Its influence far exceeds the relocation of corporate headquarters such as Huihong Group, Jiayi Group, and Lane Crawford last year.
Not only because the tallest building in Hong Kong has been built and put into use, but also because the legendary Li Jianhui in Hong Kong has left Central, the capital center of Hong Kong.
With this headquarters transfer, Tung Wah Road has occupied four of the top ten listed company headquarters in Xiangjiang. The Huihong Group ranked first, Lane Crawford ranked third, and Xinjian Bank ranked sixth.
, ranked ninth Watsons.
It is also because Xinjian Real Estate has not been listed, otherwise the top ten listed corporate headquarters, Tung Wah Road and Central would be equally divided.
Although Central is still the center of Heung Kong corporate headquarters, it has begun to decline. Especially recently, Blue Maple Holdings Group and Fuji Consortium have successively announced the establishment of Blue Maple Building and Furong Building on King O Road, which highlights that the legendary color of Central is beginning to recede.
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Perhaps in the near future, Central will only be the financial center of Hong Kong, where a large number of financial institutions will gather, and the headquarters of well-known companies will gradually move away.
It's a pity that Li Jianhui was not in Xinjian Building on this day, nor was he watching the public opinion in Xiangjiang at home. Instead, he arrived in Brunei on a special plane yesterday with Su Jiangting and many senior officials from Xinjian Department.
On New Year's Day in 1984, Brunei finally became a sovereign country, and its military and diplomacy were no longer under British jurisdiction.
If it were just like this, Li Jianhui would not lead the top management here. After all, Brunei's total population is not as good as Lisboa. Apart from having good oil resources, there is no market at all.
This time I came to Brunei mainly because of ASEAN, the core of which is ASEAN foreign exchange.
It was quite cool for Britain to let go of Brunei. In addition, Brunei automatically became a formal member of ASEAN after becoming a sovereign country. This also brought the number of formal members of ASEAN to six, and three of them belong to the Commonwealth.
Although Brunei's strength is negligible, it is still a sovereign country and still has the right to speak and vote within ASEAN.
In addition to attending the handover ceremony, the main purpose of the British high-level officials coming here this time is to hope that in addition to trade with the United States, ASEAN's trade with other countries can be settled in pounds. At the same time, they hope that ASEAN's major central banks can mainly use pounds as foreign exchange reserves.
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As the U.S. dollar continued to depreciate last year, and most countries in the Commonwealth settled trade with each other in pounds sterling, Britain became a little distracted. This time it set its sights on ASEAN, which is developing extremely rapidly.
At the British-ASEAN Financial Conference that afternoon, Li Jianhui, Shen Bi, Li Guobao, and Peng Kezhi attended the meeting as special guests.
Sitting here today include the governors of the central banks of the six ASEAN countries and the ministers responsible for finance, the governor of the Bank of England, and the owners or presidents of many first-class banks in ASEAN.
At the meeting, the Governor of the Bank of England introduced the current global foreign exchange situation, focusing on the continuous depreciation of the US dollar over the past year.
When talking about the pound, he proudly said: "Last year, due to the fact that nearly 30 countries and regions including our homeland, Canada, Australia, New South Wales, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Africa settled their mutual trade in pounds, last year
The proportion of our pound in global foreign exchange settlement increased by 8.5% compared with the previous year, from 9.6% before to 18.1% now.
This year, we will continue to promote the pound to become the trade settlement currency of the European Community countries and further increase the proportion of the pound.
And the most important thing is that compared with the 13.5% depreciation of the US dollar in one year, our pound appreciated by 15.7% in US dollars last year. Based on this calculation, even if the US dollar does not depreciate, our pound appreciated last year.
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Although the pound in this era is not as glorious as it was at the beginning of the century, it is still doing well, unlike a few decades later when it basically completely degenerated.
Moreover, the British influence in Southeast Asia has always been relatively strong. In addition, the US dollar has not been very effective for more than a year. In addition, there are also the support of the three Commonwealth countries of Malay, Brunei, and Singapore, so that today’s meeting has been controversial from the beginning.
Develop in the favor of England.
In this regard, Li Jianhui actually doesn't care. Due to Hong Kong's own reasons, it is difficult for the Hong Kong dollar to become the main currency for international trade settlement. ASEAN's decision will not have a big impact on the Donghua Conference.
The only thing Li Jianhui is worried about now is whether Britain can withstand the pressure from the United States.
You must know that Britain is attacking the roots of the United States. The other side will never allow the pound to override the U.S. dollar, or even allow the pound to pose a slight threat to the U.S. dollar.
After the central bank leaders finished their speeches and it was Li Jianhui's turn, he said: "We at Xinjian Holdings have always supported the diversification of foreign exchange settlements, which can also reduce our risks.
In our trade with ASEAN, we are willing to accept settlement in pounds sterling. Of course, if we are willing to settle in Hong Kong dollars, we will be more supportive.
We also hope that ASEAN can take further steps in economic cooperation, explore currency integration, and promote the development of ASEAN economic integration."
I don’t know what the major central banks are thinking. The Governor of the Bank of England wants to sew Li Jianhui’s mouth shut with glue. If ASEAN really pursues monetary integration, it will be more of a loss than gain for England.
Shen Bi's attitude was much clearer, saying that HSBC is willing to provide assistance as much as possible to ASEAN countries' foreign trade settlement in pounds sterling and contribute to ASEAN's economic development.
As the president of the ASEAN Development Bank, Peng Kezhi said: "ASEAN's economic ties are getting closer and closer. I think it is necessary to issue a unified currency, which can make ASEAN's economic development faster and more convenient."
After that, Li Guobao also spoke, but he didn't talk much about it. In fact, Li Jianhui, Li Guobao, and Peng Kezhi all knew that there was no possibility of a unified ASEAN currency in the short term.
The reason why it was brought up at the meeting today is just to add some trouble to the British. Xinjian Bank has proposed N times to become the right to issue Hong Kong dollar notes, but has always been rejected.
In addition, the Exchange Fund is gradually increasing its sterling reserves, and Li Jianhui and others' proposal to increase Japanese yen foreign exchange and gold reserves has not been well implemented, which also makes Li Jianhui and others very dissatisfied.
In fact, Li Jianhui has always had doubts about the British pound because of his past life memories. On the contrary, Li Jianhui is very clear that the value of the Japanese yen will continue to appreciate in these years and will not decline from its peak until the mid-1990s.
Therefore, compared to the pound, Li Jianhui has always been more optimistic about the yen. Several securities investment companies under the Xin Jian Group made quite good gains last year by doing long yen.
As for shorting the U.S. dollar, Li Jianhui was afraid that the American consortium would not act according to common sense, so he did not let his securities investment companies do it on a large scale. He just made some pocket money from it.
Originally, Britain thought that it would be a sure thing this time, with the support of three Commonwealth countries, and Thailand also supported this. However, in the final statement, the presidents of the Philippines and Indonesia's central banks finally stated that they were not yet ready for foreign trade.
Preparation for pound settlement.
Obviously, the first consultation between Britain and major ASEAN central banks could not reach a consensus, and Li Jianhui was also happy to see this situation.
American capital is not a good bird, and British capital will not be much better once it re-emerges. It is a pity that it does not have much say in the Hong Kong dollar, otherwise it will definitely find ways to promote the internationalization of the Hong Kong dollar.