Life Copy Game

Top floor of Kaya City Nolanka Building

"I've said before, you can make your own decisions on these matters. I sent you here because of your drive to move forward. Don't be hesitant. Go ahead and do it boldly."

Lina, who had permed her hair into wavy curls and was still wearing a white shirt and a hip-hugging skirt, rubbed her brows, then she placed her hand on the office door handle and continued,

"The supermarket chain won't let us in, so we'll bypass them and visit the southern districts of Wetland first. It's impossible for all supermarkets and convenience stores to be taken care of by the Kaijit Group. Let's calm down and do it.

"Get rid of those small supermarkets first, and then find a way to open up the online channels. We will do it step by step according to what we discussed before. If it doesn't work, we will come back to discuss it, so that's it."

After saying that, she hung up the phone, rubbed her brows again, took a deep breath, turned the door handle, pushed open the office door, and looked into the office, "Secretary Danilo, I just got off the airship. A little late...”

She had a very good relationship with Old Danny because of security reasons, but the private relationship was a private relationship, and in formal occasions, her title was still very formal.

However, before she finished her slightly apologetic words, she froze in place.

At this moment, in the board secretary's office, board secretary Danny was in front of the coffee machine against the wall, with his back to her, as if he was making coffee. On the sofa beside him, there was a tall and handsome young man sitting.

The other person was holding a cup of steaming coffee in his hand and was raising his head to look at Lina who opened the door and came in.

A gentle smile appeared on his resolute cheek, "Long time no see."

Lina looked at the familiar but somewhat vague profile, and was a little distracted for a moment. For some reason, her heart gradually calmed down.

The annoyance and helplessness that had accumulated in her heart gradually dissipated under the words "Long time no see", like clouds blown away by the spring breeze.

The man always had this silent, soothing power.

A faint smile also appeared on her cheeks. She slowly walked into the office and responded, "Long time no see."

"Would you like a cup of coffee?"

At this time, Old Danny also turned around, smiled and handed the mixed coffee to Lina.

"Thanks."

Lina was stunned for a moment and took the coffee.

Sitting on the sofa was naturally He Ao. He took a sip of coffee, glanced at Danny, and then at Lina, "Sit down, we just happened to be talking about you."

"ah?"

Lina sat down on one side of the sofa and was stunned when she heard He Ao's words.

"Danny said you were involved in food development. How is it over there?"

He Ao put the coffee on the table and asked softly.

"not so good,"

Hearing this, Lina came back to her senses and explained slowly, "To be precise, it's very bad."

Along with this question, those disturbing thoughts flooded into her mind again.

But when she looked at He Ao's calm eyes, the anxiety in her heart gradually subsided. She took a sip of coffee, sorted out her thoughts, and continued,

"During your 'sleeping' period, we made breakthroughs in some grain industry technologies and developed some products such as synthetic steaks with better taste. These products are not only sold in Kaya City, but also to some other countries. city ​​of,

“Because our pricing is relatively low and we rely on relatively high-quality ‘cost-effectiveness’, these products have made breakthrough progress in some cities and captured a portion of the market share.”

"but,"

She paused, "These products were boycotted by the grain industry monopoly alliance. Although we joined the alliance as soon as we started food production, our right to speak is far inferior to the two giants of the alliance, Moshanto. and Kjet.

"Especially the Kejit Group, they are an emerging grain industry giant and they are very domineering. After discovering that we were trying to enter the grain industry, they immediately launched a 'sniper attack' on us.

“First of all, they communicated with all the supermarkets and convenience stores they supply to, and through coercion and inducement, they banned these supermarkets and convenience stores from putting our products on the shelves.

"Then, they launched several similar competing products for several of the better products we sell, and started a price war with us. The prices of several products were even lower than the cost of raw materials, even if their own farms With raw materials from factories, it is impossible to reduce the cost so low.”

"So they are paying us to start a price war and want to squeeze us to death?"

He Ao took a sip of coffee and continued to ask.

"Yes,"

Lina nodded, "This is a method often used by Kejit. They have squeezed their peers over the years. Basically, they spend money on subsidized price wars, spend money on big announcements, and then squeeze all their peers to death, and then directly Raise the price much higher than the original level and make huge profits by relying on technological advantages and monopoly position.”

This kind of competitive operation is actually very common in the federation, especially when large consortiums suppress emerging small businesses.

Large consortiums will lower the prices of specific competing products. Relying on the cost advantage of scale, they will first test the prices to a lower bottom line. If they still cannot kill the competing companies, the consortium headquarters will conduct a subsidized price war to bring the prices to the cost line. the following.

Strictly speaking, this is actually a financial operation.

In addition to technological advantages, the subsidy price war is also about whose capital is stronger. This itself is more advantageous for large consortiums with large amounts of capital.

Unless another large consortium ends up, small businesses with a little bit of enthusiasm will basically be caught up in this system.

To put it bluntly, this is no longer separate from the advantages and disadvantages of the product itself. It is time to fight for capital.

Of course, this kind of battle is still effective for large cross-industry consortiums like Nolanka Group.

Under normal circumstances, new conglomerates from outside the industry will get a piece of the power from the original conglomerates in the industry, and fight a war that may be nerve-wracking.

This war will continue until both sides are exhausted and one side cannot bear it anymore and is forced to negotiate a peace.

Either the new company survives, and the old alliance chooses to retreat and form a new monopoly alliance with the new company.

Or new businesses are simply driven out of the industry.

Of course, no matter what the outcome of this kind of battle is, the monopoly alliance will increase prices significantly in the end, and in order to cover the previous losses, it will also ensure a certain profit.

However, usually, this kind of nerve-wracking price war will only start when the new enterprise is slightly threatened. After all, once this kind of battle starts, it will cause a lot of losses and the investment cost will be too high.

And with the current market share of Nolanka Group, it should not have touched the red line of the industry.

The Kaijit Group is now starting to snipe and engage in price wars, which is actually a bit extreme.

"After all, the Kejit Group is a young large consortium. It is domineering and sharp, like a mad dog, so that it appears that it is not easy to mess with and will not attract attacks from other consortiums. Although it does behave like a mad dog in the market. , to the point of making too many enemies.”

He Ao calmly summarized the situation he encountered so far, "However, this kind of obstacle is something we will inevitably encounter in our development. The Kaijit Group is just the beginning."

"Yes,"

Lina also nodded. She looked at He Ao and said softly, "Not only the Kjet Group, as we further enter the grain industry, Moshanto and the original grain industry consortium will definitely join in. With our The current cash flow will most likely not be able to support this kind of battle.”

"Danny, what is Kaya City's food self-sufficiency rate now?"

He Ao looked at Danny aside.

"Master Wei'an, after these two years of development, we are now self-sufficient with almost 80% of our food."

Danny replied slowly.

"What if we include Rock City and Limen City?"

He Ao asked further.

"The self-sufficiency rate is less than 40%,"

Danny looked at He Ao and continued,

"Currently, we have not only encountered attacks from the Kjet Group, but our food production technology has also encountered bottlenecks. Moreover, the three cities of Kaya City, Rock City, and Limen City are not suitable for food production, and they do not have enough food factories. To supply so much food, we need a dedicated food production base.”

"I see,"

He Ao nodded slightly, thought for a moment, and then continued to ask, "How about the medical side?"

"Qiming Medical College is running very well now,"

Danny answered,

“The first batch of one-year medical school trainees have entered Qiming Medical College for internship in Kaya City, Limen City, Rock City and Chenxi City.

"Except for some underground doctors who are already practicing medicine, most of them are young people who have just entered school. After a year of crash study, they can't do any surgery, but under the leadership of old doctors, they can treat some headaches, colds and the like. Minor illnesses are still okay.

"Of course, as you said before, the school also teaches them a lot of health care knowledge. When they treat diseases, they will also warn patients about some basic health care knowledge."

“What about the medical prices?”

He Ao then asked, "Does the hospital treat many people?"

"According to the previous arrangement, we registered a 'Pate-Qiming Charitable Foundation'. This foundation will donate money to subsidize the hospital, and then reduce the price of outpatient services in the name of subsidy,"

Danny replied, "The hospital attracts many people without medical insurance. Many people in Chenxi City take buses for several hours and go to Qiming Hospital for medical treatment across districts. Basically, every intern doctor's appointment is fully booked for the day. "

Doctors are an industry that requires a lot of experience. They see a lot of patients and are exposed to many difficult and complicated diseases. Coupled with learning, these intern doctors can grow up quickly.

New doctors will become old doctors, and old doctors can lead new doctors.

In any case, although it can be expected that the road ahead will be difficult, the first step has finally been taken.

"What does the Medical Foundation Alliance say?"

Ho asked.

The Nolanka Group had just sold a little grain, but it was strongly attacked by the Kjet Group. The medical consortium was even more affected and would not go unresponsive.

Moreover, Qiming Hospital has also reduced medical prices. Although it is a roundabout way of subsidying through charitable foundations, it only looks good, and the major financial groups are actually aware of it.

"The medical consortium alliance is still poaching our doctors, trying to find ways to restrict the issuance of our doctors' medical qualifications, and control our drug sales."

Danny explained,

“However, these actions have not had much impact on us yet.

"First, as the leaders of the medical consortium alliance, Qunxing Pharmaceutical and Huiermei Medical Consortium have had major negative incidents in the past year for unknown reasons, which have seriously affected their public image, so they have been much more cautious in doing things. , not particularly excessive.

“And because of the setbacks of the two major consortiums, many small consortiums in the Medical Consortium Alliance are also trying to take advantage of the market share of the two giants to see if they can take a bite of their flesh, so they have no time to take care of us.

"The second is that Christos's health care reform started the trend of health care reform. Currently, major cities have health care reform laws similar to those in Chenxi City. There are even rumors of health care reform laws in the Federal Parliament.

“So as you might have expected before, apart from internal fighting, the main goal of the medical consortium alliance is to focus on the health care reform laws of Christos and Chenxi City.

"The above two reasons allow us to have a better development environment now, but this environment should not last too long."

After listening to Danny's analysis, He Ao nodded.

Overall, the current situation has not exceeded his previous estimates.

Christos blocked the front, attracting a lot of attention and firepower, giving Nolanka Group a chance to develop.

“What about the industrial side?”

he continued to ask.

Nolanka Group itself is an industrial group, and Kaya City is an industrial city.

Industry is the foundation of Nolanka Group.

"The funds we previously obtained from financial operations have been fully invested in expanding reproduction,"

Talking about the main business, Danny slowly straightened his back, "We have opened many factories during this period, and now it is rare to see pure unemployed homeless people in Kaya City.

“After Limen City was merged into our market, many products that were originally in the backlog have also found sales, and the cash flow generated by the export of these products has further enabled us to gain the ability to further expand reproduction.

"As the first batch of employees gradually gained stable income, their expectations for the future became better, and they were more willing to spend more money and have more money to spend. Now the product backlog is getting smaller and smaller. We have Cash flow is becoming healthy.”

To put it simply, the plate is coiled up and can start to rotate based on inertia. It is not as difficult as it was at the beginning.

"Um,"

He Ao nodded, he raised his bracelet, flipped through the summary document Eve sent him when he just woke up, and asked thoughtfully, "But I found that the recovery of consumption seems to be less than expected? We sent it It seems that not much of the wages are used for consumption?”

This is not a good situation. If there is not enough consumption and the inability to open up new markets, it will still lead to tight cash flow and a backlog of goods for the group.

When He Ao asked this question, Danny looked at Lina.

Obviously, this is a problem within Lena's responsibility.

The most important task He Ao gave to Lina at the beginning was to make her responsible for publicity. Publicity not only conveyed the group's intentions to the lower levels, but also collected information from the lower levels and brought it to the upper levels.

"Because of debt,"

Lina nodded and said softly, "Most of the employees of the group, especially the previously unemployed employees, are more or less burdened with a large amount of debt from financial companies.

"Take credit cards as an example. Credit card companies use various installment policies and various handling fees to hide their true interest rates. The annual interest rates of most federal credit cards are above 16%. Most grassroots enterprise employees can borrow money The interest rates are over 20%, and medical installment loans tend to have even higher interest rates.

“The current federal loan interest rate is linked to the user’s credit rating. The higher the user’s credit rating, the lower the interest rate. The lower the credit rating, the higher the interest rate.

“The operating rules of financial companies are to try their best to lend money to people who are rich and can afford to repay the money, while poor people who cannot afford to repay the money need to pay more interest if they want to borrow the same money. .

"Those who were once unemployed and homeless employees had the lowest credit rating after losing their jobs, so their borrowing interest rates were the highest. Most employees' bank borrowing interest rates can basically reach 36% or even higher.

“And no matter how many low-interest loans they borrowed before, the debt they ended up needing to bear was actually high-interest loans.

"Because even if they had debts with relatively low interest rates before, as they lose their jobs and cannot pay back the debts when they mature, they still have to borrow high-interest debts to repay low-interest debts and use debts to support debts. In the end, all Debt is high interest.

“In fact, many of our employees have gone through bankruptcy, but federal bankruptcy laws do not mean that individuals do not need to pay debts after bankruptcy.

"After they went bankrupt, they just entered the bankruptcy protection stage. After all the properties were auctioned, the remaining monthly income was allowed to leave a portion of the money each month for living, and the money in excess of this amount would be withdrawn. Used to pay off debts.

“Of course, some employees choose to roll over debt, exchanging higher interest and longer debt terms for lower debt repayments.

“When they are wandering, they don’t have to care about these things. After all, they have no income and no interest on debt.

“But when they accept employment from the Nolanka Group and try to start their lives over again, these debts severely hinder and limit their lives.

"A debtor who is burdened with an annual interest rate of 36% will use a large part of their income to repay the bank's debt, and a large part of this debt is the bank's interest. Many people The monthly repayment interest will even be much higher than the current month’s principal repayment.”

Lina looked at He Ao, "Just like what was said in Professor Searle's book you once showed me, a large part of the labor results of those employees were taken away by financial companies in the form of 'interest' and became financial companies." profit,

"And after they were taken away from the fruits of their labor, their disposable income became less, which in turn led to a decrease in purchasing power. Naturally, the recovery of consumption was not as expected."

"What's your solution?"

He Ao looked at the two people in front of him, and he knew that they must have prepared a solution.

"The lowest-cost solution is to wait until everyone's debts are paid off bit by bit, and then naturally there will be more money at their disposal."

Lena replied.

"Time is a good medicine," He Ao nodded lightly, "but we may not have more time."

"There is a way,"

Lina hesitated for a moment, then said slowly, "Provide preferential loans to group employees through Nolanka Bank, and replace their original high-interest loans with low-interest loans, so that most of the interest taken away from them can be left to They can also roll over debt to increase short-term spending power.

"This can free up part of the consumption. We have tried it in Kaya City for a period of time, and the effect is very good."

She paused, "But doing this requires a lot of cash flow. This behavior is actually using our money to pay the financial companies that issue loans. Although after the first month, the money will gradually come back. , but if you want to achieve good results, you need a large amount of capital in the early stage.

"And our cash flow is already very low."

"Summarize,"

He Ao looked at Lina and smiled, "We are short of money. It takes money to solve the food development problem. It also takes money to ease consumption congestion and continue to promote industrial development. Our problem is that we have no money."

Although you may be able to grind it slowly if you don't have money, He Ao doesn't know if Nolanka Group still has that much time to develop.

"Um."

Lena nodded.

She stared at He Ao's smile. She didn't know why, but she always felt that the consortium was going to be in trouble.

He Ao picked up the already cold coffee, took a sip, and looked at Danny, "Danny, is Mr. Faith back?"

"It should be here."

Danny glanced at the time on his bracelet.

Faith is the B-level leader of the Nolanka mercenary group.

He Ao stood up slowly, "Let's go meet him."