Seeing this, many people felt dizzy.
Didn't Citibank borrow 100 billion USD from the Daqian?
This means that Citibank has at least 100 billion USD in funds. How can the market value of the stock market be only 75 billion USD? This is absolutely impossible.
But this is the truth. There are many similar examples in reality. For example, a company has 10 billion RMB in cash, but its A-share market value is less than 8 billion RMB. Then, it was directly acquired by someone else.
Apple once had 300 billion USD in cash, but its stock price was only a little higher than this.
Of course, there were probably some shady reasons behind this, or there was something fishy going on. Citibank didn't have these things at all. He was only worth 75 billion USD.
For example, if you check Citibank's market value now, it's only 130 billion USD. But Citibank's cash business is as high as trillions of USD.
In fact, almost the entire banking industry is like this. Because there is a basic common sense that is ignored. No matter how much cash a bank has, the cash is the depositor's money. It has nothing to do with the bank itself. The bank is just a proxy.
Take Citibank as an example. In 2008, Citibank had more than 100 billion USD of user savings and various funds.
But after Citibank's financial report was released, it was found that Citibank lost 1,263 billion USD in 2008. Of which, Citibank's real assets were only 36 billion USD.
Is the market value of 75 billion USD low?
Of course, before the financial crisis, Citibank's market value was more than 100 billion USD. It was one of the top ten banks in the United States. But after the financial crisis, Citibank's market value plummeted along with the entire stock market. When Citibank was exposed to have more than 80 billion USD in loans to General Motors, and General Motors was unable to repay the loans, Citibank's market value plummeted to less than 60 billion USD.
Logically speaking, if the Daqian didn't secretly start to buy all of Citibank's circulating shares, Citibank's stock price would never rise to 75 billion USD again.
At first, the senior executives of Citibank were a little happy. But when they reacted, everything was too late. 80% of Citibank's shares were circulating, and the Daqian had obtained 52.45% of Citibank's shares through various means, achieving relative control of Citibank.
So yesterday, the representative of the Daqian Group appeared in Citibank and forced a shareholders' meeting. Then, he announced the appointment of Mr. Jia Yapeng as the chairman and CEO of Citibank.
All the higher-ups of Citibank were dumbfounded. For a moment, no one remembered to give Fantase a call. Otherwise, Fantase would not have come to the Great Qian Empire to show off. Instead, he should have come to lick his master's boots.
It was a pity that Fantase missed this opportunity forever. He received a letter of dismissal personally issued by the chairman on the spot. Then, Fantase was directly fired.
As the chairman of Citibank, Boss Jia immediately stopped the recovery of the Daqian Group's funds. He said that the Daqian Group could repay the money according to the plan every year. If they didn't have the money, they could postpone it. It didn't matter.
Of course, the Daqian Group couldn't ask Citibank to cancel their loans directly, because the money was lent to the Daqian Group. It wasn't Citibank's own money. If Citibank dared to cancel, the United States Banking Regulatory Commission would ask them to have a chat.
But if the Daqian Group couldn't repay the money, Citibank would give them a buffer period of three to five years. During the buffer period, they wouldn't collect any interest. It was a completely legal operation.
Soon, the whole news spread throughout the financial circle. This was the first thunder they heard in 2009.
A company that borrowed money turned around to buy a bank that lent money to itself. Such an operation was unheard of. This was a great financial innovation!
According to later statistics, the total cost of the Daqian Group's acquisition of Citibank was 41.2 billion US dollars. Including the annual installment of 11.2 billion US dollars, the Daqian Group actually only spent 52.4 billion US dollars to solve a huge crisis of 100 billion US dollars. At the same time, they also completely protected the Daqian game. No one could have any ideas about the Daqian game.
This was definitely the most shocking operation in the 21st century. It even caused many bank employees to be worried. They were afraid that they would be swallowed by someone accidentally.
On the other hand, Hua Xia was quite happy because Citibank's reputation in Hua Xia was really big. In the past, the people of Hua Xia called the United States United States, so Citibank was almost a United States bank.
In addition, Citibank was also the bank that left the deepest impression in Hua Xia. Along with HSBC and Standard Chartered Bank, it became one of the three notorious foreign banks in Hua Xia in the old era.
Citibank was originally established in 1812. Later, the Eight-Nation Alliance entered the capital. Li Hongzhang signed the Xinchou Treaty that humiliated the country. The most important part of the treaty was the Boxer Indemnity. Citibank participated in it.
Speaking of Li Hongzhang, Boss Jia had always been very disgusted by those who tried to whitewash Li Hongzhang in the future. Li Hongzhang couldn't be whitewashed. He was the number one traitor in Hua Xia who humiliated the country.
At that time, there were always people who said that the situation Li Hongzhang faced was very bad. If he refused to sign the contract, Hua Xia would be completely colonized to whitewash Li Hongzhang.
However, this was complete nonsense. How bad could the situation Li Hongzhang faced be?
In any case, the capital was already finished. The Old Summer Palace was also burned down. The old witch was also hiding in Xi 'an and didn't dare to return home. At this time, if Li Hongzhang waved his arm, half of the Southeast would rise in response. Our Qing Dynasty would be finished. Hua Xia would start a republic in advance. Who knows, maybe we would walk a new path.
The corruption of the Qing Dynasty was true. However, if the Qing Dynasty was rotten, would Li Hongzhang be clean?
Li Hongzhang's greed was no less than anyone else. In addition, if the Qing Dynasty was rotten, why didn't Li Hongzhang raise his arm and wave it around?
There were also people who said that the old witch was directing all of this behind the scenes. Li Hongzhang was just a cover used to take the blame.
I believe these words. The old witch must have been behind all of this. After all, to the old witch, it didn't matter how much money Hua Xia lost. What mattered was that our Qing Dynasty could continue to be tyrannical.
However, Li Hongzhang wasn't a Bannerman. Even if he didn't want to rebel, he could still jump ship and do nothing. After all, his Huai Army was around. No matter what he did, the old witch would have to coax him. She wouldn't dare to fall out with him.
Taking a step back, even if Li Hongzhang didn't raise his arm and didn't take the initiative to provoke the western powers, Li Hongzhang only needed to do nothing. He just needed to bite the bullet and not sign the contract. If he dragged it out for one or two years, the conditions of the treaty could be reduced by at least ten times.
This wasn't a joke because these western powers had already exhausted all of their strength at that time. They no longer had any strength in the Far East. Otherwise, they wouldn't have gathered the strength of eight countries to start a war.
In addition, even if they took down the entire Hua Xia, what could they do? Their strength couldn't rule Hua Xia at all. Hua Xia wasn't India, and it couldn't be ruled by them. If they stayed in Hua Xia for a long time, they would be dragged into a quagmire and unable to extricate themselves. It would also involve a lot of the local forces, and they might even be defeated by the Germans.
Therefore, at that time, the Eight-Nation Alliance didn't have the confidence to swallow so many conditions. At that time, the Ying State official who was in charge of the negotiations asked for credit from the parliament. He said that their original plan was only 50 million taels of silver. In the end, because of his persistence and intimidation, they finally got a shocking 450 million taels of silver as compensation. This was all his credit.
From this, it could be seen how stupid Li Hongzhang was at that time. He was scared out of his wits. He was completely a sinner of the nation, and it wasn't worth washing his name.
However, to be honest, the title of the Qing Dynasty's plasterer was not just in name. If Li Hongzhang didn't sign the contract, the Qing Dynasty might have indeed been destroyed in advance.
What a pity.
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