In Hong Kong, we build a global business empire

Chapter 175 Becoming a Director of Hong Kong Land Group
After Chen Shoulin gave a brief report to Lin Haoran, he also convened a simple board meeting in the company.

In the conference room, Chen Shoulin announced to all board members of Hong Kong Electric Group the cooperation they had reached with the Hong Kong Land Development Group.

It is a good thing that HK Electric Group has become a shareholder of Hutchison Whampoa Group and can hold so many Hutchison shares. Naturally, there is no reason to object to it.

The land at the former site of the Electric Road Power Station in North Point has long been included in the key development projects of the Hong Kong Electric Group this year. It is only natural that it is now jointly developed with a real estate giant like the Hong Kong Land Group.

What's more, it was useless for other directors to object, because Chairman Lin Haoran and Executive Director Chen Shoulin both agreed to this cooperation plan.

Lin Haoran's 49.9% of the shares give him the highest voting rights in the group. Combined with the voting rights held by executive director Chen Shoulin, it would be useless even if others united to oppose.

At 2:8 am on February , Lin Haoran got in his car and left the Shixun Road villa.

The destination is the Connaught Building in Central, the headquarters of the Hong Kong Land Group.

Before going there, Lin Haoran had already made an appointment with Chen Shoulin by phone to meet in the basement lobby of Kangle Building.

After arriving at Kangle Building, he met Chen Shoulin who had arrived earlier. Next to Chen Shoulin was the head of legal counsel of Hong Kong Electric Group.

The three men, along with their bodyguards, took the elevator and headed straight to the 51st floor.

The 51st floor is where the office of Jardine Matheson Group’s general manager, Bao Fuda, is located. All of Jardine Matheson’s senior offices and boardrooms are located on this floor.

After exiting the elevator, under the guidance of the staff, they successfully arrived at Bao Fuda's office.

In the office, Lin Haoran not only met Bao Fuda, the general manager of the Hong Kong Land Group, but also Niu Bijian, the boss of Jardine Matheson. In addition, there were several foreigners standing next to them. Judging from their clothes, they should be senior executives or shareholders of the Hong Kong Land Group.

"Mr. Lin, Mr. Chen, you are here." Seeing Lin Haoran and the other man, Bao Fuda stood up from his chair and greeted them enthusiastically.

Niu Bijian also stood up, walked to Lin Haoran and shook hands with him.

"Mr. Lin, we have prepared the first draft of the cooperation agreement between the two parties. Mr. Lin and Mr. Chen will move to the next meeting room with us later. We will take a closer look at the agreement there. If there are no problems, we will sign the cooperation agreement." Niu Bijian was in a good mood at the moment.

"HK Electric Group and Hong Kong Land Development are cooperating, and we will all be family members from now on!" Lin Haoran responded with a smile.

The time was almost up, so a group of people walked out of the office, walked through the corridor for more than ten meters, and finally came to a conference room that was more than one hundred square meters in size.

In the conference room, Lin Haoran, Chen Shoulin and the head of legal counsel of the Hong Kong Electric Group represented the Hong Kong Electric Group.

The Hutchison Whampoa Group was represented by Niu Bijian, Bao Fuda, and their legal advisor.

"Mr. Lin, Mr. Chen, we have clearly written down the conditions and details for the cooperation between the two parties in the agreement. Please take a look. If there is anything inappropriate, we can modify it at any time. After the modification, we can sign the agreement!" Bao Fuda handed several draft agreements to Lin Haoran and others.

Niu Bijian and his men did not read it, but it was obvious that they had already carefully read the contents of the agreement after it was drafted.

Yesterday afternoon, after Chen Shoulin finished his phone call with Lin Haoran, he continued to chat with Bao Fuda for a long time about the details at the headquarters of Hong Kong Electric Group, so there was basically nothing to discuss today.

Lin Haoran, Chen Shoulin and the head of legal counsel of the Hong Kong Electric Group carefully examined every clause and detail of the draft agreement, striving not to miss any omissions.

Lin Haoran quickly finished browsing it. He personally did not find any obvious problems, so he waited for further review by Chen Shoulin and the group's legal advisor.

A few minutes later, the head of the legal advisor slowly spoke: "Chairman, Mr. Chen, this agreement is generally very perfect, there is only one minor point that I suggest to make appropriate adjustments.

Specifically, it is the provision in Article 5 of the agreement that Jardine Matheson should be given priority when HK Electric Group sells its shares.

I suggest that we add a condition on this basis: that Jardine Matheson has the right of first refusal, but when the purchase price offered by Jardine Matheson does not meet our expectations, if there are other buyers willing to bid higher, we should reserve the right to sell to the higher bidder.

Such a modification can not only ensure the flexibility of our transaction, but also fully consider the interests of all parties. "

After hearing this, Lin Haoran and Chen Shoulin both nodded in agreement, expressing their appreciation for the legal advisor's professional vision and meticulous considerations.

As expected, professionals are professionals. They can see the problem at a glance and are cautious enough when making modifications.

Then, Chen Shoulin handed the agreement to Bao Fuda and Niu Bijian, and said with a smile: "You two, I think you have heard the problem our legal advisor just mentioned. Based on this, it is okay to write the conditions we just mentioned into it, right?"

What the legal advisor meant was actually very simple. Even though you, Jardine Matheson, have the right of first refusal, the transaction price cannot be decided by you, Jardine Matheson, otherwise, wouldn’t the Hong Kong Electric Group have no pricing power?
Of course, in reality, Lin Haoran had no intention of selling the shares of Hong Kong Electric Group held by Swire Properties to anyone.

He doesn't care much about this regulation.

However, Lin Haoran also strongly supported it, because in this way, no one would think that he had any intentions towards the Jardine Matheson Group.

“This regulation can be included, but at this share price, we need to set a reasonable upper limit to ensure fair and transparent transactions. I suggest setting the transaction upper limit to 120% of the real-time share price. For example, if the current share price is HK$5 per share, the maximum bid should not exceed HK$6 per share.

We are not sure whether you will deliberately reach a deal with others in secret. If you first offer a price that we cannot accept, and then operate behind the scenes to sell the shares to other consortiums with unclear intentions, this will be very disadvantageous to us.

To avoid potential unfair transactions, this is our bottom line, otherwise our priority is just a decoration. "As the boss of Jardine Matheson, Niu Bijian quickly figured out the key point!
"I can agree to it, but I hope the transaction limit will be raised from 120% to 130%. The transaction limit of 120% is too low!" Lin Haoran said without hesitation.

He hoped that these actions would make Jardine Matheson let down its guard against him, so that he could better secretly plan against the Jardine Matheson Group.

As for selling the shares to other people, that is simply impossible.

He could acquire the Jardine Matheson Group himself, so why would he sell it to someone else?
"Okay, I agree too!" Niu Bijian answered directly. An additional 10% cap would not have a big impact on them.

In Niu Bijian's opinion, it is impossible that HK Electric Group became a shareholder of Hong Kong Land Development in order to sell shares for money. What is the difference between this and Hong Kong Land Development directly investing in a cooperative real estate development company in the form of cash?
He felt that the reason why the Hong Kong Electric Group chose this condition as a cooperation transaction was probably to prevent the Hong Kong Electric Group from encountering brokerage difficulties in the future, in which case they would have to choose to sell the shares of the Hong Kong Land Group out of necessity. Otherwise, they would not have put forward such a condition.

In the end, both sides no longer had any disagreements.

So, before long, the revised agreement appeared.

After checking again and making sure there were no more problems with the agreement, we made two copies and everything was ready.

"Mr. Boss, the media we invited have arrived and are waiting outside." At this time, an assistant came in and whispered to Niu Bijian.

"Invite them in, our signing ceremony is about to begin." Niu Bijian said directly.

"Okay Mr. Taiban!"

After a while, several reporters with cameras walked in from outside. Judging from the logos on the clothes they were wearing, they were reporters from three newspapers: Hong Kong Business Daily, South China Morning Post, and Asian Wall Street Journal. There were not many of them.

On the contrary, there is no reporter from Oriental Daily News, the newspaper with the largest sales volume in Hong Kong. It is obvious that these British financial groups do not think highly of Oriental Daily News.

Everyone knows that although Oriental Daily News has long been ranked first in Hong Kong in terms of sales, its reputation is not very good due to the influence of the Ma family, who controls it behind the scenes. It is normal for these British financial groups not to invite them.

Inviting these reporters here is obviously just for the company to announce the news of the cooperation through these reporters with whom they have been working for a long time, and there is no need for too many reporters.

Both parties held a copy of the agreement, and in the presence of reporters, Lin Haoran, Chen Shoulin, Niu Bijian and Bao Fuda signed on behalf of each party.

Afterwards, Lin Haoran shook hands with Niu Bijian, and Chen Shoulin shook hands with Bao Fuda. With the reporters taking photos, the deal was considered to be done.

These reporters were not aware of the specifics of the deal at this time.

It was not until the reporter asked questions that Bao Fuda, as the host, explained in detail the content of this cooperation.

Suddenly, these reporters knew that big news was coming.

Unexpectedly, after being taken over by Chinese capital, the Hong Kong Electric Group would actually become a shareholder of the Hong Kong Land Development.

More than 6% of the shares is not a small number. Among the official shareholders of Swire, he can be ranked among the top five.

Jardine Matheson, the major shareholder, naturally owns the most shares. Together with its subsidiary Jardine Securities, it originally held about 20% of the shares of the Hong Kong Land Group.

However, after this round of financing, their shareholding ratio has been appropriately reduced to only about 18.72%.

Of course, given Jardine Matheson's current cautious attitude, they will definitely increase their stake. It is impossible for them to only retain 18.72% of Hutchison Whampoa's shares.

The reporters quickly wrote down these contents. They knew that once this news was announced, it would definitely cause heated discussions among Hong Kong citizens.

In particular, one of the protagonists of this event, Mr. Lam Ho Yin, Chairman of Hong Kong Electric Group, this young Hong Kong man, has made amazing news one after another.

"Mr. Lin, on behalf of the Hong Kong Land Group, I invite you to become a member of the board of directors of the Hong Kong Land Group!" Niu Bijian sincerely invited in front of the reporters.

When this deal was reached, it was well deserved for Lin Haoran to become a member of the board of directors of Hong Kong Land Group on behalf of Hong Kong Electric Group.

After all, it would be too much if he could not become a board member even though he holds 6.4% of Jardine Matheson Group’s shares.

"I am very honored to be a member of the board of directors of the Swire Group!" Lin Haoran said solemnly.

As soon as Lin Haoran finished speaking, there was warm applause at the scene, welcoming Lin Haoran as the new director.

All the board members of Swire Properties were present at the scene. Naturally, they had already made decisions on these matters at the previous board meeting. Now they were just taking advantage of the presence of reporters to announce the decision to the outside world.

Lin Haoran knew that the Hong Kong Land Group and the Jardine Matheson Group would implement the strategy of mutual control of Jardine Matheson as early as this year. This was probably because there were constant rumors in the market that some Chinese entrepreneurs wanted to join forces to acquire Hong Kong Land or even Jardine Matheson, so this was a defensive strategy that they had to make.

At present, there is no such news in the market, so Niu Bijian will naturally not start to implement this strategy.

After Lin Haoran becomes a member of the board of directors of the Jardine Matheson Group, he will know the news as quickly as possible. As a member of the board of directors, Niu Bijian cannot hide these things from him.

Therefore, it is still very beneficial for him to join the board of directors of the Swire Group.

This is equivalent to Lin Haoran inserting an informant into the Jardine Matheson Group, and this informant is even Lin Haoran himself!

If there is any major decision, the Jardine Matheson Group needs his participation.

This way, he would have more time to come up with a response plan.

Now, the acquisition of the Jardine Matheson Group is more certain!

(End of this chapter)