In Hong Kong, we build a global business empire

Chapter 619: Bank of East Asia successfully privatized, second wave of counterattack!
Just as Ho Sin-heng said, the Hong Kong Police Department published a notice in the newspaper the next day, with clear words: There is currently no conclusive evidence to show that the various actions of the former employees of Bank of East Asia were directed and manipulated by the Bank of East Asia.

At the same time, the China Securities Regulatory Commission also issued an announcement shortly afterwards, claiming that after a comprehensive and detailed investigation, Huifeng Bank was not involved in any violations of regulations or disciplines in this incident.

In other words, Huifeng Bank was directly and forcibly "cleared" of any improper connection with this incident by government agencies, even though all evidence showed that these former employees of Bank of East Asia were all masterminded by Huifeng Bank behind the scenes.

That’s right, the government agency just downplayed the blame for Huifeng Bank.

Such actions undoubtedly send a signal to the public - Huifeng Bank has the support of the Governor's Office, and even if there are many suspicious points in its behavior, it can remain safe under the protection of the government.

What is even more surprising is that, the day before, only a few newspapers, such as Oriental Daily News, reported on what the Bank of East Asia said in a press conference. The rest of the newspapers gave their headlines to the rumor-refuting content of the press conference held by Huifeng Bank.

It is obvious that these newspapers have been "secretly bought" or "deeply pressured" by Huifeng Bank, choosing to suppress public opinion on this matter, and it will not be long before it is forgotten.

On the surface, the police station's announcement and the newspaper's reporting tendency seemed to have allowed Huifeng Bank to temporarily stabilize its position.

However, when Lin Haoran held a press conference at the Bank of East Asia yesterday, it was broadcast live by Hong Kong's two major television stations, and many people throughout Hong Kong watched the press conference in its entirety.

Coupled with the report from Oriental Daily, a newspaper with far leading sales and huge influence in Hong Kong, it is simply wishful thinking for Huifeng Bank to completely suppress public opinion by relying on its hegemonic position in Hong Kong!

Oriental Daily is a newspaper solely owned by Lin Haoran. No matter how powerful Huifeng Bank is, it cannot interfere with the reporting of Oriental Daily.

Although the government departments are currently biased towards the Bank of Hong Kong, perhaps because they have received warnings from Governor MacLehose, these government agencies have not done anything bad to media such as the Oriental Daily.

Therefore, the public opinion did not stop.

Instead, many citizens began to speak up for Lin Haoran.

The various branches of Bank of East Asia began to appear to be short of manpower due to the layoffs of those employees.

However, after Lin Haoran announced the privatization of Bank of East Asia, many citizens were no longer so anxious to withdraw cash.

In their view, as long as Bank of East Asia can obtain capital injection support from Lin Haoran, the security of funds will be firmly guaranteed.

Moreover, the Hong Kong Banks Association has given a clear deadline, allowing citizens to re-select banks before July. As long as the funds are transferred out of Bank of East Asia before the July deadline, they will not be included in the blacklist.

Because of this, although there are still long queues in front of each branch, the number of people has been significantly reduced compared to before.

The unfair competition of "choose one of two" ultimately made many people choose to give up Bank of East Asia. Although they felt sorry for what happened to Bank of East Asia, when faced with their own interests and convenience, the reality still tilted.

After all, in Hong Kong, a place with active finance and fierce competition, citizens are accustomed to making the best choice between stability and convenience. The Hong Kong Banking Association already represents most of Hong Kong's banking institutions, including Bank of East Asia, Standard Chartered Bank, and Hang Seng Bank, with a market share of more than 90%. If they choose Bank of East Asia and give up other banks, it is obviously irrational.

In particular, Huifeng Bank, with its huge business network and long-accumulated customer base, was able to attract most citizens with its "safety card" even though it was questioned during this public opinion storm.

Basically, more than half of the citizens who withdrew cash during this bank run eventually chose to transfer their funds to Huifeng Bank.

While verbally supporting Bank of East Asia, they actually voted with their feet and transferred a large amount of funds to Huifeng Bank.

this is the truth.

Faced with such a situation, Lin Haoran was not anxious.

For now, it is enough for him to keep public opinion hot for the time being.

He will only take formal action after the complete privatization of Bank of East Asia is successfully completed.

On June 6, Wharf Holdings and Hong Kong Land Development jointly released a major announcement.

The announcement showed that Hutchison Whampoa successfully raised HK$2.6 million in cash by issuing bonds.

Of course, the reason why Wharf Holdings was able to raise this money so easily was because all of the money was provided by the Hong Kong Land Group, so the Hong Kong Land Group also became Wharf Holdings' creditor.

Subsequently, the funds were quickly invested in the secondary market to purchase an equivalent value of Wharf shares.

Immediately afterwards, Wharf Holdings reached a key agreement with Hong Kong Land Development with the acquired shares: Hong Kong Land Development took out its 11.8% stake in Wheelock Holdings and exchanged shares with Wharf Holdings.

Once the share exchange process is completed, the Hong Kong Land Group will officially hold 26% of Wharf Holdings' shares.

This result is a win-win situation achieved after more than a week of negotiations between Hong Kong Land Group and Wharf Holdings.

From this transaction, 2.6% of the shares were acquired for HK$26 million, which is equivalent to estimating the market value of Hutchison Whampoa at HK$10 billion.

This transaction is a win-win situation for everyone.

And the Hong Kong Land Group officially became the second largest shareholder of Wharf Holdings.

In addition, the Pao family officially increased its shareholding to 51% through the stock market. At the same time, the Pao family officially announced the privatization of Hutchison Whampoa.

Naturally, the Bao family would not continue to acquire the remaining shares, but they would be absorbed by the Swire Group instead.

After all, Lin Haoran and Bao Yugang had already agreed that the Bao family would hold 51% and the Swire Group would hold 49%.

Once this matter was announced, it did attract the attention of some people, but the impact was not significant.

At this moment, everyone's mind is still on the competition between Bank of East Asia and Bank of East Asia. In the face of this competition, the privatization of Whampoa seems to be somewhat calm, like a stone thrown into a deep pool. Although it stirs up some ripples, it is quickly covered up by the noise of the financial waves.

After all, ever since Bao Yugang took control of Wharf Holdings, Wharf Holdings has been disliked by many shareholders because it has not paid dividends for many years and has not reported profits for many years.

Therefore, the share price of Wharf Holdings did not rise due to the announcement jointly issued by Wharf Holdings and Hong Kong Land Development.

According to the next plan, after the Hong Kong Land Group has absorbed enough shares, Wharf Holdings will enter into compulsory privatization. At that time, the remaining shares will all be acquired by the Hong Kong Land Group.

Lin Haoran learned from Bao Yugang's son-in-law Wu Guangzheng that Bao Yugang was currently recuperating and preparing for a major operation, and refused to see anyone during this period.

Lin Haoran naturally knew very well what the surgery was.

Bao Yugang is now in the early stages of lung cancer, and the probability of cure is still very high.

In addition, he also knew that Bao Yugang had invited the most authoritative experts in the world to Hong Kong to perform the surgery.

Therefore, he did not disturb Bao Yugang.

In the blink of an eye, a few days passed and it was June 6th.

On this day, Lin Haoran finally received good news. The China Securities Regulatory Commission approved the successful privatization of Bank of East Asia.

After selling the remaining shares in their hands to Lin Haoran, the Li Peicai family used the funds to focus on establishing their own new bank, preparing to use the personal connections they had built up over the years and sufficient funds to once again carve out a niche for themselves in the financial market.

At this point, Lin Haoran's shareholding in Bank of East Asia officially exceeded 90%.

Combined with the shares acquired through the secondary market, the company's shareholding gradually reached 93%.

Although the actual shareholding is only about 93%, with the cooperation of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, it is enough to carry out forced privatization.

Next, those citizens who still hold shares of Bank of East Asia can either choose to sell them to Galaxy Securities at the share price of HK$6, or they will be holding the equivalent of a piece of waste paper.

This is because the shares of the remaining shareholders will be forcibly cancelled, and those shareholders who still hold shares can only passively take their tickets to the major branches of Bank of East Asia or Galaxy Securities to exchange them for cash.

When Bank of East Asia was successfully privatized, Lin Haoran was no longer silent.

Firstly, companies under Lin Haoran, including Hongkong Land Group, Wan Ching Group, Hong Kong Electric Group, Oriental Press Company, China Gas, Kowloon Motor Bus, and Hong Kong Telephone, which had not taken any action, published announcements in newspapers, stating that from that day on, all financial businesses of each company would be transferred from Bank of East Asia to Bank of East Asia, including Standard Chartered Bank and others.

Huifeng Bank and other major banks are very cooperative because this involves their financial reputation. If they do not cooperate, who would dare to entrust their business to them?
Therefore, although the major banks were reluctant, they had to follow the rules and assist these companies in completing a smooth transition of their financial operations.

The bank that suffered the biggest loss was Huifeng Bank.

This time, the business amount involved by Huifeng Bank directly exceeded 18 billion Hong Kong dollars, which can be said to be a heavy loss.

Hengsheng Bank also suffered a loss of nearly HK$2 billion as a result.

Other banks also suffered losses to varying degrees.

Although this operation caused quite a stir in Hong Kong, many people had already been mentally prepared, so no one made a fuss about it.

These are all companies controlled by Lin Haoran. Now that Bank of East Asia has been privatized by Lin Haoran, it is reasonable for his own companies to hand over their financial businesses to the bank he controls.

During this period, the bank run on Bank of East Asia gradually subsided.

What Lin Haoran didn't expect was that the number of customers who chose to withdraw from Bank of East Asia and withdraw cash to other banks was not as many as he had imagined.

In the end, the original depositors' funds of more than 20.8 billion Hong Kong dollars were reduced to 42 billion Hong Kong dollars. In other words, the depositors and the business of some companies eventually caused the Bank of East Asia to lose about billion Hong Kong dollars. This part of the funds has been transferred to other banks by transfer or withdrawal.

Although only one-third of the original number remains, it is enough to prove that even in an unfair choice between two options, there are still citizens who choose to support Bank of East Asia. This is a good phenomenon after all.

Although Huifeng Bank used the "choose one of two" strategy to cause heavy losses to Bank of East Asia, after the announcement of the entry of the businesses of companies such as the Hong Kong Land Group into Bank of East Asia, the actual capital business volume of Bank of East Asia has officially surpassed that of Hengsheng Bank.

After all, whether it is the Hong Kong Land Development, the Wan Ching Group, the Hong Kong Electric Group, etc., each of them is a top large enterprise in Hong Kong. The assets they hold are very large, and each group is comparable to countless ordinary customers.

Under this circumstance, Bank of East Asia has actually surpassed Heng Seng Bank to become the second largest bank in Hong Kong.

Although the business volume of this second largest bank was almost entirely pushed up by Lin Haoran's companies, and its ordinary customers are far less than those of Hengsheng Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, etc., it does not prevent it from becoming the real second.

After all, if these banks are asked to choose between ordinary customers and large corporate clients, they will definitely give priority to large corporate clients.

These high-quality customers of Bank of East Asia are enough to make other banks envious and jealous.

Kangle Building, 51st floor, Lin Haoran’s office.

At this moment, there were several other people in his office besides Lin Haoran.

Including Cui Zilong, Dashan, Ma Shimin, Burton, Chen Shoulin, David and other heads of Lin Haoran’s companies.

During this period, although the feud between Bank of East Asia and Huifeng Bank has been reported by media such as Oriental Daily, the heat has not cooled down.

However, Lin Haoran has not taken any follow-up action, leading everyone to mistakenly believe that Lin Haoran has given up on confronting Huifeng Bank head-on and instead focused on integrating the internal resources of Bank of East Asia and consolidating his newly acquired position.

In other words, everyone thought that Lin Haoran had already given up in this competition.

Although relying on the financial business of companies such as Hong Kong Land Group and Hong Kong Electric Group, Bank of East Asia is already in an invincible position and has no worries about performance.

However, this is ultimately too dependent on internal resources, while external resources have been greatly restricted. From the fact that two-thirds of Bank of East Asia's customers have run away, it can be seen that Bank of East Asia's foundation in the external market has been completely loosened.

Today, Bank of East Asia has 20 branches. If things continue like this, most of them will no longer need to be opened.

Because, with the reduction of external markets, the number of customers has dropped significantly, and it would be a waste to maintain so many banks.

The financial business cooperation between companies such as Hong Kong Land Development and Hong Kong Electric Group and Bank of East Asia is carried out through the head office and there is no need to use these branches at all.

This is the purpose of Huifeng Bank.

They could not stop the Hong Kong Land Group and other companies under Lin Haoran from transferring their financial businesses, but as long as Bank of East Asia found it difficult to gain more external markets in Hong Kong, Bank of East Asia would never threaten the position of Huifeng Bank.

In this way, although they completely offended Lin Haoran, they also completely eliminated this threat.

They would rather completely lose important clients such as the Hong Kong Land Group than see Bank of East Asia pose any threat to Bank of East Asia.

If they did not stop it and allowed the Bank of East Asia to develop normally, they were worried that with the strong support of Lin Haoran, the market share of the Bank of East Asia in Hong Kong would one day surpass that of the Bank of East Asia, completely pulling the Bank of East Asia down from the altar.

This is naturally something they don't allow.

Although the current situation of Bank of East Asia is much worse than expected, with so many customers still insisting on staying with Bank of East Asia, it is basically within the expectations of Huifeng Bank.

However, just when everyone, including Huifeng Bank, thought that Lin Haoran had given up on a head-on confrontation with Huifeng Bank, Lin Haoran now planned to formally launch a second wave of counterattacks.

The last time through the press conference, even though Lin Haoran produced strong evidence, with the help of government agencies, Huifeng Bank safely survived the biggest crisis.

Whether it is Huifeng Bank or a government agency, anyone with a discerning eye can see that they are lying with their eyes open.

Even though many people feel indignant about this, and even though the Oriental Daily has been keeping the matter hot, as time goes by, people's attention will eventually be attracted by new hot spots, and the wave of public opinion will gradually subside.

Although he felt a little regretful, Lin Haoran also knew that a giant like Huifeng Bank could not be defeated so easily.

Therefore, he was not angry about the government's favoritism.

As the representative of Britain in Hong Kong, it is understandable that the Governor's Office favors British companies.

If Lin Haoran hadn't become a powerful figure now, the government would probably have to deal with him openly.

"Boss, we have almost collected all the dirty information about Huifeng Bank's unscrupulous suppression of its peers, market manipulation, and forced acquisitions over the years. All the evidence is here.

This includes Huifeng Bank’s manipulation of public opinion, which led to a run on Hengsheng Bank, which was eventually sold to Huifeng Bank. These crimes include, but are not limited to, malicious manipulation, market manipulation, fabrication of materials, tax evasion, fabrication of evidence, etc. Some of these crimes are unbearable even for the Governor’s Office. Once exposed, they will surely cause an uproar.”

As the number one general in charge of news, public opinion and intelligence, Cui Zilong handed over all the information he had collected during this period to Lin Haoran.

The loyalty of everyone present was at least 90, so Lin Haoran was not worried that what happened here would be spread.

Lin Haoran nodded, took the information and flipped through it.

Everyone thought that he had conceded that he could not do anything to Huifeng Bank, but he had been secretly making plans.

The information here, including the evidence, is very complete. Cui Zilong sent people to investigate, which took a lot of effort.

Among them, including the acquisition of Hengsheng Bank, the evidence contained in it is impossible to be leaked to the society, and perhaps even He Shanheng does not know about it.

If Ho Sin-heng saw this evidence, I wonder how his perception of Hui Feng Bank would change and how he would react?
After closing the information, Lin Haoran said, "Boss Cui, your next task is to report all this information through the Oriental Daily News, as well as commercial media in Southeast Asia, the United States, Japan, and other places. I want Huifeng Bank to become the focus of attention in the global financial community and expose its scandals."

"Boss, please rest assured. I know what to do!" Cui Zilong replied respectfully.

Lin Haoran looked at his other subordinates, and finally looked at the mountain.

"Mr. Dashan, next, you should raise the bank deposit interest rate to twice that of Huifeng Bank. I want to see how many people can withstand the temptation of high interest rates!" Lin Haoran continued.

At present, the annualized deposit interest rate of major banks in Hong Kong is about 2.5%. In order to attract deposits, some small banks will increase the annualized deposit interest rate to about 3%.

Lin Haoran asked Dashan to raise the interest rate to twice that of Huifeng Bank, which means an interest rate of 5%.

"Boss, isn't this interest rate too high? Recently, due to the cooling of the Hong Kong real estate market, the real estate lending in Hong Kong has begun to decline. This month, it is only around 12%, and the loan funds are not much.

In other words, it is becoming increasingly difficult to invest through lending. Although we are competing with Huifeng Bank, a 5% interest rate is a trick that kills one thousand enemies and hurts eight hundred of our own.”

Dashan didn't quite understand the deeper considerations behind Lin Haoran's operation, but as the current interim head of Bank of East Asia, he still raised his doubts.

Although the interest rate for loans is much higher than the interest rate for deposits, in today's uncertain real estate industry, many banks actually find it difficult to lend out their funds, and keeping the funds in the bank means a continuous loss for the bank.

He thought his boss resorted to such ruthless tactics in order to regain the market.

Lin Haoran smiled. He needed a lot of funds in Japan now. If the Bank of East Asia could take this opportunity to absorb a large amount of deposits and use them to make arrangements before the bubble economy in Japan, the annualized rate of only 5% would be a negligible cost.

This is much cheaper than the cost of taking out a loan.

Moreover, this move will not only enable us to compete for more market share.

Although the choice between the two has forced many citizens to transfer their deposits out of Bank of East Asia, if the benefits are sufficient, they may reconsider depositing their funds back into Bank of East Asia.

After all, in the financial markets, funds always pursue higher returns, which is an eternal law.

However, he did not give too much explanation for the time being. After all, Dashan was just a temporary person in charge in his mind. Now Dashan's role was to maintain the normal operation of Bank of East Asia.

In his mind, the person who should be at the helm of Bank of East Asia is Ho Sin Hang.

So, he said, "Mr. Dashan, just go ahead and do it. I have my own considerations. Although 5% is not a small amount, it will not cause any pressure to me with my financial resources. What you need to consider now is how to attract more customers, not the interest rate."

Hearing this, Dashan stopped asking questions and nodded, saying, "Okay, boss, I'll do as you say!"

Then, Lin Haoran looked at the heads of the remaining groups and companies.

"Your next task is to interview the partners of the group and the company, especially those companies that rely on us. They must transfer all their financial businesses to Bank of East Asia. Otherwise, we don't mind changing a partner!" Lin Haoran continued.

This is a ruthless move.

The companies under his control, including Hong Kong Land Development, Hong Kong Electric Group, Hong Kong Telephone Group, etc., are among the largest enterprises in Hong Kong.

It can be said that many companies depend on them for their survival.

Once implemented, these companies will have to transfer all their financial businesses to Bank of East Asia.

This tactic is similar to the "choose one of two" strategy used by Huifeng Bank.

He wanted to see how much market share Huifeng Bank would lose again under this circumstance!

(End of this chapter)