Chapter 648: A Counterattack!

Seeing that Li Yi was about to resort to his old tricks again—apparently intending to make them the fall guys once more—Smith and his team reacted immediately.

After consulting with the head of the Jardine Matheson Group, they ultimately decided to immediately halt their buying spree of New Territories Storage Center shares and follow Starry Company in selling off a portion of their own floating shares.

That’s right—dumping shares!

The Jardine side was well aware of the current crisis, but New Territories Warehouse Center’s stock price was simply too high—so high that they dared not hoard too many shares.

Of course, this was also directly related to Jardine Matheson’s business performance in recent years.

In the past, Jardine Matheson was indeed unrivaled in its glory. At its peak, the group controlled nearly all import and export terminals on Hong Kong Island; whether it was foreign trade or shipping, everyone had to kowtow to them.

In addition, they were heavily involved in real estate and finance, among other sectors. Nearly half of Hong Kong Island’s landmark buildings were constructed by the Jardine Matheson-affiliated Landmark Company. Back then, Jardine Matheson truly had its hands in every pie, with no one able to rival them.

However, those glory days are now a thing of the past. As the saying goes, “A hero doesn’t boast of past glories,” and in recent years, Jardine has been a hero who has gone too far in boasting of its former glory.

In recent years, the group’s business performance on Hong Kong Island has indeed been far from optimistic. Results across all sectors are deeply concerning; very few companies can even break even, let alone turn a profit.

More often than not, they have been scraping by on borrowed money.

To alleviate the financial crisis, many companies within the Jardine group have been forced to issue large amounts of bonds to raise cash and keep operations afloat.

But this practice of robbing Peter to pay Paul is undoubtedly a short-term fix; over the past few years, most companies in the Jardine group have accumulated massive debts.

This was especially true for large companies like New Territories Warehouse Centre, which required massive capital investments to maintain operations.

To survive, the Jardine Group had no choice but to repeatedly sell off shares in New Territories Storage Centre to raise funds, which ultimately led to a decline in New Territories Storage Centre’s credibility and a depreciation of its stock.

It can be said that by this point, they had fallen into a vicious cycle.

When it rains, it pours. Jardine Matheson was already struggling financially, but during the recent gold price war, they invested over 2 billion Hong Kong dollars, effectively losing nearly all the funds they had raised from selling their stake in Wharf Holdings last year.

Had it not been for Starry Company and the Chinese capital backing them—who were genuinely intent on seizing control of New Territories Warehouse and ousting the Jardine Group—

Otherwise, Jardine would never have sought outside help and spent a fortune to buy back shares in New Territories Warehouse.

Right now, they’ve acquired 29% of New Territories Warehouse’s shares at nearly double the price. In their battle with Star Company for control of New Territories Warehouse, they’ve forced themselves to pour in 2 billion Hong Kong dollars.

All of this money was borrowed from HSBC, and if they get stuck with these shares, they’ll be in big trouble.

So, as soon as they saw Star Company preparing to withdraw, the head of Jardine Matheson could no longer sit idly by.

For them, if they were trapped at such high prices, the company would immediately face extreme operational difficulties.

At that point, the impact wouldn’t be limited to just the New Territories Warehousing Center; dozens of companies across the Jardine Group, large and small, would suffer as a result.

The only option now was to follow Star Company’s lead and dump their shares as well.

Once Jardine joined the wave of stock dumping, all the investors were stunned.

They could understand Star Company clearing out its position—it’s normal to cash out after driving up the price.

“What on earth is the Jardine Matheson Group up to? You’re the longtime owners of New Territories Warehouse—why are you joining the fray?”

In an instant, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange was thrown into turmoil, and New Territories Warehouse’s share price plummeted by 8 Hong Kong dollars.

More importantly, this move by the Jardine group directly shattered the psychological defenses of the speculators, who hurriedly followed suit and liquidated their positions to flee.

In the VIP lounge, after receiving Pang Feiyan’s report, Li Yi couldn’t help but let the corners of his mouth turn up slightly.

He then glanced at his watch and realized there were less than twenty minutes left before the market closed.

Without delay, he ordered all traders to spring into action, buying up every available share of New Territories Warehouse on the market—delivering a devastating counterattack against Smith and his crew.

With Starry Sky’s sudden shift in strategy, all traders acted in unison, frantically buying up New Frontier shares.

By the time Smith and his team realized something was amiss, the several million shares they had put up for sale had already been snapped up by Starry Sky’s traders.

In just a few minutes, Star Corporation’s traders had purchased over ten million shares, at an average price of only 100 Hong Kong dollars per share—a drop of more than 30 Hong Kong dollars from just an hour earlier.

More importantly, with these tens of millions of shares, Star Company now held a 53% stake in New Territories Storage Center, securing a controlling interest.

The sudden turn of events caught everyone off guard. In the VIP lounge next door, both Powell, the head of Jardine Matheson, and Smith, the chief administrator of the British-owned conglomerate, were stunned!

At the same time, they realized they had been tricked.

Star Company had never intended to walk away; they had merely been feigning retreat to advance.

Because they couldn’t hold their ground, the other party had now successfully secured controlling interest in New Territories Warehousing Center.

Barring any surprises, tomorrow they would present their share certificates at the New Territories Warehousing Center to verify their ownership, and then, as the controlling shareholders, demand a new shareholders’ meeting.

By then, not only would the Jardine Matheson Group lose control of the New Territories Warehousing Center, but most of its senior executives would be shown the door, becoming the laughingstock of the industry.

“Powell, we’ve lost!” Smith said, his face etched with despair.

He felt utterly despairing inside. This was already their fourth showdown with Li Yi, and just like the previous times, they had suffered a crushing defeat.

Powell, on the other hand, maintained a relatively composed expression.

After a brief silence, he said in a deep voice, “Smith, let’s go see that young man.”

Smith was taken aback for a moment, then asked, “Why see him?”

“To strike a deal with him!”

“???”

“I plan to transfer all of the remaining 21% of my shares to him!” Powell said, making a startling announcement.

“What did you say? This…”

Smith was completely baffled by Powell’s decision. What on earth was he up to?

Powell sighed and said, “As you said, we’ve already lost. We’ve lost control of New Territory Warehouse. Rather than being forced out, it’s better to withdraw on our own terms!”

As he spoke, Powell’s tone was calm, without a hint of emotion.

It wasn’t that he was particularly composed; rather, this was something they at Jardine Matheson had long anticipated internally—they just hadn’t expected this day to come so soon.

In fact, ever since “The Shipping King” and “The Man from Li” joined forces to compete with them for the Kowloon Wharf, Powell and the entire Jardine Matheson Group had known that the New Territories Wharf would soon become the next target in the battle among Chinese-owned conglomerates.

There was no helping it; New Territories Wharf’s stock price had depreciated so severely that it no longer reflected its actual value.

Even before Star Company entered the fray, the share price of over 60 Hong Kong dollars didn’t even cover a third of New Territories Warehouse’s property value.

In other words, New Territories Warehouse’s actual value was around 20 billion, but its market valuation was only about 6.5 billion. With just a capable manager at the helm, the company’s stock price could be boosted in no time. dxmbang

Jardine Matheson is not unaware of this issue, but their management style is too Westernized. Coupled with the company’s ongoing financial crises, they simply lack the capacity to overhaul the operations of New Territories Warehouse or the Kowloon Wharf that was previously snatched away by the “Ship Chartering King.”

Ultimately, these two major warehousing hubs became a stepping stone for the crowned king of Chinese capital!

At this point, the situation is irreversible; the only thing left to do is minimize losses as much as possible.

Powell intends to take advantage of the current relatively high stock price to sell all his shares in New Territories Warehouse to Li Yi in one go.

In this way, although they would lose control of New Territories Warehouse, they would gain a substantial amount of cash—an outcome that was not entirely unacceptable.

With that thought, Powell immediately stood up and walked toward the VIP lounge diagonally across the room!

Seeing this, Smith, though filled with a thousand regrets, had no choice but to quicken his pace and follow…

………