Chapter 2327 The Wind Rises

Wall Street in August is still a prosperous scene. A large number of financial professionals in custom suits, accompanied by assistants holding coffee, are in high spirits and coming in and out of the building.

In the lobby of each well-known institution, those who come to negotiate business and look for opportunities are crowded together, and when the uniformed guards next to them look over, they immediately give a smile.

In fact, many people waiting here are absolutely high-income people by the standards of the American people, but the standards of Wall Street are obviously different from those of ordinary people.

Tens of millions, hundreds of millions, or even billions of assets are all scum in front of these Wall Street companies, and are not worth mentioning.

Of course, if you are not only wealthy, but also the founder or person in charge of a company with a high market value or valuation, then you may be respected by Wall Street.

In this world, the most realistic is always the financial industry. It doesn't care about factors such as comprehensive strength. It only looks at two points: how much money you have and how much money your company has.

Tourists from all over the world, as always, come to this narrow street in the hot sun with a pilgrimage mood, and take photos with the symbol and mascot of Wall Street, the bronze bull, almost devoutly.

They look at the elites who walk in and out of the buildings next to them with envy.

When looking up at the windows of these historical buildings, they are all in awe. Many people fantasize or yearn to sit behind those windows and make transactions worth tens of millions or hundreds of millions of yuan...

Even if they can't make such high-value transactions, having a position in these buildings on this street is a kind of success for many people.

This is not an ordinary street, it is the heart of the real world financial center.

On this street, even the income of a new employee will make many wealthy middle-class families envious.

They don't know at all that some people in these buildings are already ants on the hot pot at this time.

…………

Ralph Theophi, the former star fund manager of Bear Stearns, now a sinner in the eyes of the company and users, looked at the still bright sunshine outside the window and the still lively scene downstairs, and always felt that everything he saw was very fantastic.

Or, is everything I experienced just like a dream?

The substantial bankruptcy of the two funds he managed and the angry condemnation from users gave him more time and reasons to go to the bar to get drunk these days.

However, the colleagues he met there were still no different from the past, still living a life of singing and dancing, and being drunk.

This is also related to the tradition of Wall Street. Wall Street adventurers generally believe that as long as the music is still playing, everyone should dance to its rhythm as much as possible.

Now, the music is still as strong as ever.

So when he was in the bar, Theophi always felt that I might have just encountered a temporary predicament. The next moment, the securities I invested in will be able to bring high returns to myself, the company and the users as before?

However, once he returned to the office, the data in the system once again clearly told him a cold fact: he was in a cold valley, and there was no hope of escaping from any aspect.

After drinking three cups of coffee, there was a question that he still had no answer to: Am I out of touch with reality, or is the world out of touch with reality?

He called the top executive of the asset management department again.

After the "beep", a calm but distant voice sounded, "Seofi, you have your work to do, I have my work to do, let's both focus on our work, okay?"

Seofi listened to the beeping sound after the phone was hung up woodenly. He could fully imagine that the other party must be greeting his family at this time, because he was now a troublemaker in the eyes of many people in the company.

The current chairman and CEO of the asset management department has only been in office for a short time, or it should be said that he has only been in office for a short time. He is an expert invited by the company's senior management to Lehman Brothers, Jeffrey Lane, the vice chairman of Lehman Brothers.

Ryan was responsible for reviving Bear Stearns' asset management business and restoring Bear Stearns' image. The most urgent task was to ensure the proper placement of the two risk funds of Siophie to avoid major losses to investors' interests.

Richard Marin, who Ryan replaced, was Siophie's former boss and served as his senior consultant, while Siophie was actually excluded at this time.

So, Siophie sat there in a daze. What else can I do?

Ryan, who came to save the fire, was also having a very hard time at this time.

Originally, handling such affairs was a piece of cake for him. As long as he raised funds to save the above two hedge funds and prevent their assets from being auctioned off at a low price by creditors in order to minimize losses, he would have accomplished his mission.

For investment banks like Bear Stearns, the way to raise funds internally is also very simple, just sell the assets of other funds under its umbrella.

The problem is that the situation of other funds under Bear Stearns is not much better at this time. Frankly speaking, it is a blessing that only two funds need to be saved, rather than more funds.

After asking Seife to focus on his work on the phone, he felt that he actually didn't have much work to do. The best way to save the two funds and minimize Bear Stearns' losses was to announce the bankruptcy of the two funds.

He put away the final solution given by his subordinates, took a folder, and found Bear Stearns' CFO, Sam Molinaro, "Sam, we think it's better to give up,"

In front of the solemn Molinaro, Ryan, who was still in good condition at Lehman Brothers, seemed a little relaxed.

"I understand your concerns and your feelings, but believe me, this is the best solution,"

"Sorry, we tried our best,"

This is the greatest sympathy he can give to Bear Stearns.

After all, for the giants of Wall Street, who hasn't suffered losses?

Molinaro, who has a lot more white hair on his head and seems to have lost a lot of weight, put away the plan, "Thank you Ryan,"

"It's just that we have to wait,"

"Wait?"

"Yes, wait," Molinaro said.

He believed that although this problem did not attract everyone's attention - as can be seen from Ryan's relaxed attitude, at this time, there must be colleagues who encountered the same problem as him.

If other colleagues announced such a result first, and Bear Stearns followed up, although losses would still be inevitable, the company's reputation would not be damaged too much.

Because whether it is a good thing or a bad thing, people tend to only be impressed by the first person who appears.

Announcing after other colleagues is actually telling the outside world, look, this is not our fault, this is the problem encountered by our industry.

He knew very well how important reputation, this seemingly illusory thing, is to financial institutions like them.

Especially at such a time.

He knew very well that although the current situation seemed difficult, it was definitely not the most difficult time. The days to come would be the most difficult time.

At that time, they needed such a good reputation even more to prevent more users who lost confidence in Bear Stearns from running and redeeming.

Faced with such a situation, even a well-functioning financial institution would be unable to cope with it, let alone their broken ship that seemed to be leaking and more places seemed to be about to leak.

On such a gloomy day, a rare piece of good news is that this time, they did not suffer too long in waiting.

On the second day of August, the European counterpart across the ocean, Deutsche Industrial Bank, announced a profit warning because of the huge losses that may be incurred by a Rhineland fund with a scale of 12.7 billion euros and the bank itself's small participation in the US real estate subprime mortgage market.

In order to avoid causing too much adverse impact, their public statement only said that after the audit of the balance sheet, it was found that 6.2 billion euros of assets in the total assets were "difficult" securities.

And said, "The risk is controllable."

However, the German central bank subsequently convened German banking peers to discuss a basket of plans to save Deutsche Industrial Bank, which undoubtedly made it very clear that their situation was far from as easy as they stated.

Feng Yiping's phone was immediately bombarded with calls.