Chapter 2739 The Beginning of $1 Billion in Revenue

One of Yahoo's most important executives chose to join Feng Yiping, who had no room for change with him. This immediately made Sun Zhengyi a little angry.

how so?

What he didn't know was that at this time on Wall Street, there was a person shouting almost the same words as him.

Manhattan, New York.

At the intersection of Seventh Avenue and Forty-ninth Street, there is a building that looks like a tower with a castle. Like Times Square not far from it, this building also has a huge LCD screen on its exterior wall. , on the screen, a variety of beautiful and tall patterns are scrolled, of course, the one that appears the most is the green logo of Lehman Corporation.

Because this building is the headquarters of Lehman Brothers.

At this time, in the large office on the 31st floor of the building, Fuld, the president of Lehman Brothers, was watching the press conference on TV blankly, listening to Paulson saying to the camera, "...the reason for taking This historic measure is because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are so large and have such close ties with the financial system that the failure of either of them will lead to major turbulence in the U.S. and global financial markets..."

After Paulson, Lockhart of the Housing Credit Administration further added specific measures, "...accounting for 80% of the two companies,...the repayment level of our capital injection, after the debt..."

Hearing this, he couldn't help but cursed, "motherf××k,"

The wine glass in his hand was slammed down on the table, "Why is this happening?"

Because the reason why Fannie and Freddie are what they are today is really inseparable from his company.

The reason why Fannie and Freddie, which was not as well-known as Wall Street's five major investment banks, came to prominence during the subprime mortgage crisis is related to a research report on Fannie and Freddie released by Lehman on July 7 this year.

The tone of that report was very pessimistic. They believed that Fannie and Freddie had two major problems: first, they had falsely reported profits before; second, they were now concealing huge losses.

Therefore, Fannie and Freddie actually have a huge funding gap. The report and using rigorous data came up with a figure for the funding gap of Fannie and Freddie: US$75 billion!

This is an astonishing number, especially when viewed together with the data disclosed in their authoritative financial documents at the end of 2007, that is, the net capital of the two of them was more than 80 billion US dollars, it is even more shocking. Frightening numbers.

That is, since then, Fannie and Freddie have entered the public eye and the attention of many short-selling institutions...

It can be said that Lehman played a major role in bringing Fannie and Freddie to where they are today.

Frankly speaking, when Lehman released that report, it also had the purpose of using Fannie and Freddie to divert attention, because after Bear Stearns was acquired by Morgan Stanley at a low price, Lehman, which had many mortgage assets, became the focus of everyone's attention.

But if he had foreseen something like today, Fuld vowed that he would have sent the employees who wrote that report to Africa to expand the market.

The federal government's takeover of Fannie and Freddie has many meanings. One of them is that the U.S. government has publicly admitted that the credit problem in the mortgage market has reached a terminal illness.

So, how can Lehman, which still has a large amount of mortgage assets that cannot be disposed of, do better?

What's even more fatal is that the specific plan announced by Paulson and others actually has only one meaning. Shareholders, that is, equity investors, almost lost everything. You see, they only paid 1 billion US dollars to acquire Fannie. 80% of the shares in the United States are still preference shares, which naturally means that the shares in the hands of the original shareholders are greatly diluted.

A direct consequence of this is that starting from today, not only will no investors buy stocks of financial companies, but investors who hold stocks of financial companies will also sell their stocks desperately.

Because, who knows whether the next financial company will end up like Fannie and Freddie?

That is to say, the stocks of financial companies, especially those heavily affected by subprime mortgages like Lehman Brothers, may also become worthless waste paper.

Then why buy it? Why keep it?

The impact of this press conference on Lehman was not limited to that. Fuld knew that it would also directly affect another major plan of Lehman.

He didn't care about the time difference at this time and directly told his secretary, "Get Min's call for me, quickly!"

The Min in Fuld's mouth is Min Yusheng, the president of Korea Development Bank.

Min Yusheng, who only served as the president of Korea Development Bank in June this year, was once a subordinate of Fuld.

At first, he was the deputy representative of Lehman Brothers in Seoul. Later, he was poached by Morgan Stanley and became the chief representative of Morgan Stanley in Seoul. Soon after, he was poached back by Fuld to serve as their chief representative in Seoul. chief representative.

Although not long after, Min Yusheng could not resist the temptation and went to Korea Development Bank to become the president, but he still had feelings for his old club, or in other words, he also hoped that after serving as the president of this state-owned bank, he could come up with something that would impress everyone. Remarkable achievements come.

And being married to a world-class well-known investment bank is naturally a very testament to his achievement.

Therefore, at the beginning of taking office, he started equity investment negotiations with Lehman Brothers. Initially, everything went smoothly. The Korean banking group he led to establish was interested in investing at least US$5 billion to invest in Lehman.

However, the two sides have been in a stalemate because of the stock price issue.

At this time, Fuld decided that as long as Min Yusheng quoted a price, he would agree.

At such a time, it is of great significance for a strategic investor such as a national bank group to invest in Lehman.

First, their investment will help Lehman reduce leverage while increasing liquidity.

Second, their investment undoubtedly shows that they believe that Lehman is worth investing in, which is actually equivalent to saying that Lehman's problems are not as serious as some people exaggerate.

Fuld believes that this will have a great effect on stabilizing Lehman's stock price, and there is a high probability that it will drive Lehman's stock price to rebound.

Because such an investment will definitely attract many people to follow suit.

Fuld waited nervously for the secretary's reply. He kept looking at the watch. Every time the minute hand moved a grid, his mood became more depressed.

Ten minutes later, he waited for the news he didn't want to hear. Whether it was an office call or a private call, the former subordinate who was regarded as a savior by Fuld did not answer it.

The situation is already quite clear.

Fuld knew that when such news broke out in the United States, no matter where in the world, people like Min Yusheng would pay full attention at this time.

Yes, for example, Feng Yiping was awakened by Li Ruiyuan in his sleep at this time, "Feng, as you expected, the two houses have been taken over!"

"Well, then proceed as planned,"

Li Ruiyuan immediately felt the gap between himself and his boss again, look, how calm the boss is.

"What's wrong?" Marika woke up not long after falling asleep.

"Nothing," Feng Yiping said.

But Marika soon felt that things were not that simple, because she intuitively felt some changes in Feng Yiping.

And because of the experience of the past two days, she understood the reason for his change, he made money again.

She took the initiative to cater to him...

…………

More people were not as calm as Feng Yiping, and when the news reached Asia, the market was suddenly jubilant.

According to Lockhart, although the capital injection of the US government was preferred stock, its repayment level was behind the debt, which immediately made bond investors, including many Chinese banks, breathe a sigh of relief. This actually means that the credit rating of the bonds in their hands has been upgraded to the level of US Treasury bonds, and the principal will not be lost.

Soon after, Asian markets opened one after another, and the US government took over the two housing agencies, and they all expressed their affirmation with rising prices.

Li Ruiyuan still felt a little regretful about this. It was a pity that he could not invest in Asian stock index futures at the same time, otherwise he would have made a lot of money today.

But soon he didn't need to regret it, because when the US stock market opened on the morning of the 8th, as expected, the stock prices of the two housing agencies fell straight down.

At this time, everyone in the United Fund had entered a state of war. When he saw the stock price drop to around $1, he waved his hand and said, "Buy it!"

Suddenly, everyone started to move, and everyone felt that even the sound of keyboard tapping was so pleasant at this time.

That was not the sound of the keyboard, but the sound of dollars flowing in.

When they borrowed last year, the stock prices of the two housing agencies were still above $70, and they sold them at that time for $1.1 billion.

In this way, their profit from shorting the two housing agencies was at least more than $1 billion!

In the office, John was already pouring wine to celebrate with Li Ruiyuan, "Li, congratulate us!"

"John, don't get excited, you know, today's is just the beginning," Li Ruiyuan smiled.

PS: You can be negligent at other times, but you must not be today. Sending blessings to everyone must be early. I am serious about blessing everyone. For this, I have planned for a whole year. If you don't believe it, look at today's chapter, Chapter 580, what a good number (pay attention to the update time of this chapter)! Look at the chapter name again, earning 1 billion US dollars, it's just the beginning, what an auspicious omen! I wish you all good health, wealth and everything goes well in the new year!