My Age of Investment

Xia Jingxing, surrounded by Li Yaozu and seven or eight other senior executives, walked into the London office on the 49th floor of the Canary Wharf Tower.

The decoration is very luxurious and modern. The only flaw is that the workstations are sparse and look a bit eye-catching.

At most, there are only thirty or forty people working in the thousands-square-meter office area.

This is also a traditional feature of private equity funds. They adopt an elite strategy and their per capita output is much higher than traditional financial companies such as banks, securities, and investment banks, so they are called the crown jewel of the financial industry.

Li Yaozu took Xia Jingxing for a brief tour of the office area, and then took him to the chairman's office reserved specifically for his boss.

Now Vision Capital has opened multiple offices around the world, including San Francisco, New York, Hong Kong, Magic City, Beijing, and Chengdu. Each office will reserve a chairman's office for him.

Although Xia Jingxing may not be able to go there many times a year, no one makes mistakes in such small things. You can't just sit in the conference room and the lobby outside when the boss comes, right?

After walking into the chairman's office and looking around for a few times, Xia Jingxing nodded secretly. It was the style he liked. Liu Xiaoduo said that Li Yaozu often asked her, the secretary, about the boss's preferences.

It seems that this Aberdeen is not only good at business, he is also good at figuring out what is going on.

Xia Jingxing sat down on the soft sofa and patted it, "I'm so excited! The layout is so good, I think I will come to the London office more often in the future."

Li Yaozu grinned, "The London office is newly opened, and we need more guidance from Mr. Xia."

Xia Jingxing waved his hand, "Okay! I won't say any more. Let's report this month's results."

"With the help of Goldman Sachs UK and Morgan Stanley UK, our London office currently holds a combined net short position of £5bn..."

Xia Jingxing listened quietly. The two major investment banks had complete financial networks and connections around the world. It would undoubtedly be much easier to get things done by spending some money and leveraging the networks of these two companies.

"Rice Bank, short-sold 129.1 million shares at an average price of 261.75 pence, with a short position of 338 million pounds, accounting for approximately 1.76% of the bank's total share capital."

"Halifax Bank of Scotland, short position £216m..."

"Barclays, short position 350 million pounds..."

“Royal Bank of Scotland, short position £292m…”

"Lloyds Bank, short position 260 million pounds..."

"HSBC Holdings, short position 500 million pounds..."

…

After the quick report, Li Yaozu handed the document in his hand to Xia Jingxing, "A total of 34 financial companies in the UK were shorted, including the five largest commercial banks in the UK as well as large financial institutions such as Standard Life and UniCredit."

Xia Jingxing took the document and read it over, especially looking at the name of HSBC Holdings.

This bank opened in Hong Kong in 1864. In the same year, it established its first branch in Magic City. Its full name is Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited (Hong Kong Magic City), and its English abbreviation is HSBC, where H refers to Hong Kong and S refers to Magic City.

The Chinese translation contains the word "HSBC", which also means "abundant remittances". It was originally called Caili Bank and was changed to HSBC with the help of Zeng Guofan's son.

Since its establishment, this bank has targeted the Chinese market and made a lot of money from the opium trade, and its presence has been throughout a century of modern history.

Li Hongzhang borrowed money from it for his Westernization Movement, and Hu Xueyan was bankrupted by it together with Li Hongzhang. The Sino-Japanese War and the Hinchou Treaty indemnity were also borrowed from it by the Qing government using customs duties and salt taxes as collateral...

After 49 years, it was no longer possible to extract the marrow from the rabbit, so the business focus moved to Hong Kong Island.

After the return of Hong Kong Island, the headquarters was withdrawn to the UK in the 1990s.

Today, HSBC is listed and traded on five stock exchanges including New York, London, Hong Kong, Paris and Bermuda, and its business is distributed in 124 countries and regions around the world.

Xia Jingxing has already arranged short selling for HSBC listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and will not let go of its listed businesses in the UK, Paris and Hong Kong.

Forget it in Bermuda, it's too small.

Gently placing the documents on the table, Xia Jingxing said, "Is 5 billion pounds enough for the UK? This is an old capitalist empire with a relatively thick health bar!"

Li Yaozu smiled slightly, "Mr. Xia, we have already wiped out all 34 of the largest financial institutions in the UK. It would be inappropriate to invest more funds.

As far as I know, people from the Paulson Institute and the Soros Quantum Fund have also started to take action.

The three of our companies were shorting together, and our short positions amounted to tens of billions of pounds.

If the British government joins forces with local financial institutions to release some good news, we, Paulson and Soros will rush to buy stocks to close our positions and face the risk of short squeeze.

The amount of funds is spread out a little to facilitate handling of some unexpected situations.

Even if someone makes a move, they can only operate one or a few individual stocks. We just have to admit defeat and get out with a small loss. They can't hold up the entire market.

Moreover, this time it is a systemic financial risk, and all financial institutions cannot escape the sanctions of the market. "

Xia Jingxing nodded slightly. Although the situation was not bad now, if he was careless, the hunter would become the prey.

Vision Capital holds a lot of capital, and there is no need to engage in risky operations for temporary pleasure or convenience. If the financial crisis completely detonates in Europe, it will be a winner, and no one can make trouble.

"The British market layout is basically over. What do you think of the European market next?"

Li Yaozu replied: "There are many small countries in Europe, and the main big countries are the old powers such as Germany, France and Italy, which are also our next target.

However, their financial industry is not as developed as that of the UK, and they can absorb 5 billion pounds of funds at a stretch. "

Xia Jingxing tapped his fingers on the table. The current exchange rate between the pound and the US dollar was 1.99. If Europe could absorb 10 billion pounds of funds, then his other 20 billion US dollars of short-selling funds would have somewhere to go.

"Okay, you arrange it first, and if you have excess funds, you can invest it in other markets."

Li Yaozu nodded, indicating that he would obey the arrangement.

…………

…………

On the first day of February, major news came from the US stock market: software industry giant Microsoft planned to acquire the Internet search engine Yahoo for US$44.6 billion.

Since Microsoft's offer was a 62% premium to Yahoo's closing price on January 31, Yahoo's stock price soared 43% that day, Microsoft's stock price fell 6%, and Google was affected, with its stock price plummeting nearly 10%.

At the same time, the U.S. stock market, which had gradually lost its effect due to interest rate cuts, was once again stimulated. The three major stock indexes all rose, causing Vision to once again lose two to three billion US dollars on its books!

After Xia Jingxing received the call from Liu Hai, there were ten thousand grass and mud horses galloping in his heart. Who was he provoking? It's simply a disaster.

Not long after Liu Hai hung up the phone, Xia Jingxing's cell phone rang again. He picked it up and saw the caller ID, and his spirits suddenly lifted.

"Jerry, congratulations!"