The Industrial Giant Reborn

All of Apple's top executives and investors are very satisfied with the success of Apple's listing. A company that has only been established for a few years has become the top 500 listed companies in the United States. There are countless major technological events in history, and unlike traditional companies, Apple’s business has just begun. Its turnover last year just exceeded 100 million U.S. dollars, and it has reached this figure in the first four months of this year. In addition, the market potential of personal computers is unlimited. At the party, under the passionate speech of Jobs, many people were full of confidence and believed that Apple would be the next IBM.

"Hello, Mr. Chen. It's a pleasure to meet you here. I'm George York, the investment vice president of Goldman Sachs." A thin man about 50 years old walked up to Chen Zhiwen and said politely.

"Mr. York, hello." Chen Zhiwen nodded politely in response. One of the stock issuers of Apple's listing is Goldman Sachs.

"Mr. Chen, one of our Goldman Sachs businesses is in charge of listing companies. If your Red Bull, Midea or other companies have listing needs, Goldman Sachs is happy to serve you." After York finished speaking, he immediately handed over a business card.

"Okay, at that time, if my company will be listed in the United States, I will seriously consider it." Chen Zhiwen nodded and said.

In addition to assisting investors in investment, American investment banks also serve as issuers of listed companies. The profit of the latter is also very high. It can be said that this market is basically monopolized by several investment banks. It is natural to find other small investment banks to operate the listing, but if the publicity ability and road show arrangements are not in place, the listing financing ability will be poor For listed companies, many times they would rather be slaughtered than find these big investment banks.

Even if it is Apple, although it is famous, if there is not enough publicity, how many people in the United States will know when Apple will go public? How can you attract more funds to enter the market without enough early stage momentum? This is different from Hong Kong. In a small city like Hong Kong, a company preparing to go public spends a little money to buy a few newspaper news, and even let the stockholders spread the news by word of mouth, so that it is almost known to the whole people.

For example, this time when Apple goes public, the IPO needs to pay as much as 20 million US dollars to the investment bank. With this sum of money, many large American companies can't even reach this figure in annual profits.

Assuming companies such as Red Bull and Midea are also listed in the United States, they also need to cooperate with such a large investment bank.

"Thank you, Mr. Chen." George York continued, "I heard that Mr. Chen is preparing to acquire AMC?"

"Yes, I have this plan. Does Goldman Sachs have any ideas?" Chen Zhiwen asked with a smile. The acquisition of such a large company is actually not a big secret for the major investment banks in the United States, especially because it involves foreign capital's acquisition of local industries. Reporting to the U.S. Department of Commerce, the investment banks that lead to the White House naturally know about these relationships.

However, those who know will basically keep it a secret, spread the matter in a small area, and will not inform the general public. After all, if the acquisition that Morgan Stanley is going to facilitate is leaked to the public in advance by Goldman Sachs, causing Loss, and the next time Goldman Sachs does the same thing, someone else can do the same.

"Although Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are competitors, you are already discussing cooperation, and we will not intervene, but I have another business, maybe Mr. Chen will be interested." George York said.

"What business?" Chen Zhiwen asked.

"Mr. Chen should know that Chrysler is now in a life-and-death crisis. Although last year, the White House agreed to allocate 1.5 billion US dollars for Chrysler's self-rescue, but for a loss-making auto giant, this amount of money is a drop in the bucket, so they urgently Needs more money so Chrysler is preparing to sell a lot of assets one of which is 330 car dealerships across the US many of which are in good locations and if you buy AMC plus the cars Sales terminal, will it be even more powerful?" George York said.

"Mr. York was joking. Now the car sales in the United States are basically falling in half. These stores are suffering serious losses." Chen Zhiwen said with a light smile.

The outbreak of the second oil crisis, not to mention car dealerships, is that many gas stations were closed due to lack of fuel. Costco also relied on its strong relationship to directly purchase a batch of gasoline and diesel from Southeast Asia to make up for it. It filled the gap of its own gas station, and because of the gas, it also attracted many people to come to sign up for membership.

"Yeah, so Chrysler won't sell very high, and you know where Chrysler is right now, they can sell anything as long as they can get the cash," said George York. It is difficult to sell gasoline, but this gasoline cannot be kept like this forever. The problem in the Middle East will be solved sooner or later. There are so many developed countries in Europe, America and Japan, they will not allow the lack of oil to continue, and I can tell you one thing, the US government is ready to spend thousands of dollars US$100 million to prepare the federal oil reserve, as long as the oil price returns to normal, in the next three years, the United States will reserve one year’s worth of domestic oil demand, and Europe and Japan will do the same, that is to say, there will be another war in the Middle East in the future , and it may not lead to doubling of oil in this way, the future of the auto industry is still limitless.”

"What you said makes sense, but I still need to use the funds for AMC." Chen Zhiwen shook his head and said.

"AMC's company is not large. With Mr. Chen's financial resources, it is nothing." George York continued: "We are not suitable for detailed discussions here. How about making an appointment tomorrow? Chrysler CEO Lee Eco Ka is in New York now, and I thought you could meet him."

"Lee Iacocca is also in New York? All right, then here tomorrow, I will book a coffee shop." Chen Zhiwen thought for a while and said.

The current Chrysler has indeed made everyone feel that it is about to go bankrupt. Even the U.S. government, which has borrowed 1.5 billion U.S. dollars, has officials publicly saying that it may face a financial loss of 1.5 billion U.S. dollars. A hundred CEOs who revived Chrysler within a few years and went on to become one of the most influential figures in the global auto industry.

In the original history, AMC will be acquired by Renault of France next year, but after several years of tossing, it still cannot be saved, and then sold to Chrysler.

Chrysler is currently in a serious crisis, but this century-old company has a lot of heritage in its hands, and maybe it can get some unexpected benefits from it.

The next morning, Jobs invited Chen Zhiwen to Silicon Valley to discuss some plans for Apple in the future, but Chen Zhiwen declined. He didn't want to participate in the future of Apple, because history is expected to repeat itself, and the next two years may be the pinnacle of Apple. No, he doesn't need to get involved.

At two o'clock in the afternoon, George York brought Lee Iacocca with a Chinese-shaped face to a private room of a Western-style coffee shop in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel.

"Mr. Chen, this is Mr. Lee Iacocca, the CEO of Chrysler. Li, this is the Mr. Chen I mentioned." George York introduced with a smile.

"Hello." Chen Zhiwen and Li Iacocca greeted each other respectively.

Then the three sat down, and after the waiter asked, he went to prepare the corresponding coffee.

Li Iacocca took out a stack of documents from the bag behind his back, handed them to Chen Zhiwen and said, "Mr. Chen, here are all the documents of Chrysler's 330 auto sales branches, including assets, liabilities, operations, labor, etc. There is also the number and distribution of sales outlets throughout the country, so you can know the value of these auto sales outlets very directly.”

"Mr. Iacocca's preparations are very thoughtful." Chen Zhiwen nodded and praised when he saw the catalog list after turning the first page.

Because this document is bilingual in traditional Chinese and English, it is obviously prepared for the convenience of his reading, but it also reveals another piece of information, from last night to now, it is impossible to prepare it in such a short period of time This information is in traditional characters, so either the two of them wanted to sell these car sales front shops to themselves a long time ago, or there were other potential customers of Chinese before.

The latter is unlikely. Looking at the whole world, there are only a handful of Chinese who are capable of helping Chrysler. These people are unlikely to be interested in Chrysler's branch. In many retail terminal fields, if an investment professional conducts analysis, he can judge that Chen Zhiwen, who is about to enter the automobile industry, will repeat the old path of other industries, first relying on strong capital to start the terminal automobile sales field, and then give back to himself manufacturing.

"This is what we should do. Let me briefly introduce it." Lee Iacocca said: "These 330 car sales stores are located in 170 cities on the east and west coasts of the United States. They mainly sell various models of Chrysler. It also sells other brands of cars, such as GM, Ford, and even some Japanese brands. The location is very good and well-known in the local area. In terms of profit, it suffered a loss last year, but it was also due to the oil crisis. The year before last Before, that is, only during the first oil crisis in 1974, there were losses. That is to say, if there was no oil crisis, these stores would be profitable.

At present, there are almost 13,000 car sales stores in the entire United States, and we have almost 2% of them in our hands. The turnover is about 1.5% of the whole country. "

PS: There is another one tonight