Chapter 1453: Going Further
The flight of Vladimir Korkoshko and his delegation from China arrived at Rivni West Airport at around ten o'clock in the morning on Monday, December 21.
After returning to his home in the south of the city for a brief rest, Korkoshko hurried to the Rovne State University in the city.
There was a graduation ceremony just this morning.
The School of Business Administration of Rovne State University, which is mainly funded by the Westeros system, held a one-year on-the-job training class last year, mainly providing business management training for middle and high-level managers of companies under the Rovne Group. The university's advanced case teaching mode, and at the same time adapt measures to local conditions, cooperate with the industrial layout of the Rivnebang and the economic status quo of Eastern Europe, and specially customize a batch of cases.
Because Simon has personally paid attention to this training class, and because there is indeed a shortage of business management talents here, the whole Rovno gang attaches great importance to it.
Missing the graduation ceremony, Korkoshko could only attend the noon reception.
Arriving at the school auditorium of the State University, which serves as a banquet hall, in addition to the nearly sixty cadets who graduated today, Governor Andrei Smirnov, the founder of the Ordek company Sergei Komorov, the current Rivny Mayor Vasily Nazorov, Rivny Development Bank President Boguslav Edelman, ufsr President Yuri Dovrinko and other core members of the Rovno gang all appeared here.
Everyone obviously understands that cultivating specialized enterprise management talents and improving the management level of the companies under the Rovno Gang ultimately means improving the strength of the entire Rovno Gang.
Because this is an era where the economy is king.
However, in Ukraine now, apart from the core of the Rovno gang, there are not many people who can firmly believe and insist on this truth. Rough mode.
The pattern is different, doomed to a different future.
The result of the previous internal struggle between Kuchma and Lazarenko has proved that the model of relying on power to grab benefits cannot last long. Instead, it is the kingly way for Rovno to help the side concentrate on economic development.
Of course, the Rovno gang will not be so naive as to think that they can live up to everyone by working hard.
There is still a background.
Fortunately, their background is large enough to easily crush the entire country, so they can put aside their worries and concentrate on doing things.
From 1994 to the present, in just a few years, through economic expansion and this year’s Ukrainian State Duma election, it has gained enough political capital. Even if the Rovno Gang is not deeply entrenched, it is definitely not something that anyone can easily shake. .
The next step is to continue to cultivate.
The group of students graduating today are the backbones of the Rovno Gang's enterprises at all levels. They are the main force for the next expansion of the Rovno Gang.
Patiently greeted many students in the advanced training class who were familiar with each other one by one. After a round, Korkoshko, who had drunk a lot of wine, was already flushed.
After going to the bathroom and washing his face with cold water to wake up, Korkoshko returned to the hall and saw Governor Vodmilka and the others who were gathered together waving at him, and then walked over.
After a few more pleasantries, the topic naturally turned to Korkoshko's trip to China.
In the past two weeks, Korkoshko led the team and spent most of the time in Hong Kong, and also went to several cities such as Beijing, Suzhou and Shenzhen. The specific schedule looks very boring to outsiders, basically three things: government exchanges, enterprise visits and business discussions.
If it is other government teams, it is easy to turn this kind of visit into a public trip. Of course, Korkoshko and his party were not like this, but they really went to learn from it.
Speaking of it, this kind of visit and exchange, in other cases, often has the nature of attracting investment or negotiating cooperation.
In the past few years, under the matchmaking of the Westeros system, the Rovno Gang has indeed reached a lot of cooperation with the Chinese side, such as the Chinese restaurant chain that started from Rivny and spread to many major cities in Ukraine, such as a famous Chinese restaurant. The VCD and DVD factories built by the BBK brand in Rivni, such as the large amount of amber produced in Rivne, are exported to China.
Some factories here even hired a lot of high-level managers from China, involved in production and marketing. There is no way, Eastern Europe, which still has a strong Soviet flavor, is really short of relevant talents, and China has been reforming and opening up for 20 years, and there is a lot of accumulation in this regard.
This is actually the reason why the core of the Rovno gang attaches so much importance to this executive training class.
In any case, after all, it is easier to use by yourself.
Besides, Korkoshko’s just-concluded trip to China was different this time, as there was no such arrangement as investment promotion and cooperation.
Because Rivni does not have enough resources for foreign companies for the time being.
There is no shortage of people.
However, infrastructure resources such as electricity, transportation, and water conservancy can only barely support the development of the existing pattern in the Rivne region.
Of course, the priority is to supply itself.
For this reason, the Rovno Gang also took the initiative to reject many high-quality projects in the eyes of outsiders.
Just in October, Germany's Volkswagen sent a delegation to Rivni, hoping to build a car factory here, for which the Kiev authorities paid close attention.
In the end, I had no choice but to decline.
First of all, heavy industry such as automobiles does not match Rivni's light industry-based development idea.
Second, and most importantly, it consumes too many resources.
If a car factory is really built in Rivni, not to mention the massive consumption of infrastructure resources, even the human resources here will be pinched by Volkswagen's car factory.
This is not what the Rovno gang wants to see.
It's not over yet.
After Rivny declined, the Kiev authorities were very eager to offer conditions to retain them. Whether it was Kiev, the industrial city of Donetsk in the east, or Odessa in the south with convenient transportation by the sea, the public could do whatever they wanted. Obviously, the Kiev authorities also understand the huge economic benefits that can be formed after an automobile factory drives the surrounding industrial chain.
As a result, the public didn't like it at all.
To put it bluntly, there is still a certain foundation for the automobile industry in southeastern Ukraine. On the contrary, the Rivne region is almost poor and white. Under normal circumstances, Volkswagen chooses to build an automobile factory in Rivni instead of other industrially prosperous areas. , which is really counterintuitive.
The masses are certainly not stupid.
In Eastern Europe, it can be said that everything is cheap now. According to the principle that capital naturally seeks low cost, it should have developed rapidly with a large amount of capital inflow in these years.
Why not?
The key is still one point, the business environment.
Political turmoil, collapse of law and order, dilapidated infrastructure, etc., any one of which will inhibit the inflow of capital, and now in Eastern Europe, these basically account for all of them.
Also play with wool.
Even with the direct support of the national authorities, the truth that little ghosts are difficult to deal with is the same all over the world.
Therefore, Volkswagen hopes to build a factory in Rivni. The only thing it is optimistic about is Rivni's excellent business environment under the control of the Westeros system.
With a good external environment, even if the region does not have the foundation of the automobile industry and has a stable base, it can build up the required talents and parts systems from other regions of Ukraine where the industrial foundation is not too weak.
The key is to be able to do business well.
It is a pity that Rivni does not have so many resources for the public. In other regions, the project investment of 1 billion US dollars can not be guaranteed, and the public is really afraid to go. For the Volkswagen Group, which has a large family and a large business, the loss of 1 billion US dollars is still second, and it will not hurt the bones. The key is that if the production plan is disrupted, the loss cannot be calculated at 1 billion US dollars.
The reception lasted until two o'clock in the afternoon.
Due to work arrangements, the core members of the Rovno Gang who took the time to come to support basically left early. This is the case for Sergei Komorov, who controls the core of the Rovno Gang, Aldek Company.
Just after one o'clock in the afternoon, Komorov left the reception and rushed to the Rivny Railway Station in the city center.
Regarding Rivni's railway system, the most dissatisfied point of the Rovno Gang at the moment is that the main railway line just passes through the city center.
A railway station is also built in the city center.
With the rapid development of the whole city, the railway station originally built for a small city with a population of 200,000 is obviously not enough, but because it is located in the crowded city center, it is very troublesome to expand, and the transportation of surrounding goods to the station is also very inconvenient.
This is a legacy of history.
Fortunately, the planning of the new railway station in the north of the city has been completed, and construction will officially start after the thaw next year.
I can only make ends meet at the moment.
Sergei Komorov came to Rivny Railway Station this afternoon in order to witness the latest batch of business transactions of Oldek Company go smoothly.
Arriving at the train station, Komorov saw a beautiful woman in a pink windbreaker with her hair in a bun coming over just after meeting the person in charge who was busy directing the workers to load the goods. It was Yulia Tymoshenko. .
Taking another look at the brand-new freight cars on the railroad tracks, Komorov suddenly understood why this woman appeared.
Seeing the other party approaching, Komorov showed a smiling face and took the initiative to meet him, feeling unavoidable in his heart.
After Lazarenko was taken down by Kuchma, many people thought that the former natural gas princess would quickly fall silent. After all, without the right to distribute natural gas in Ukraine, Tymoshenko’s so-called business empire lost its last The main source of income, as for other businesses, has not yet entered the right track.
Unexpectedly, this woman soon made a comeback.
It was rumored that Tymoshenko had formed an alliance with another central bank governor, Viktor Yushchenko, who held Ukraine's money bag, and reached a settlement with the Kuchma family, so he was able to recover. In fact, as one of the core members of the Rovno Gang, Komorov knew that this woman was able to gain a firm foothold again only after she found her boss.
Simon hoped to train Tymoshenko into his own dark chess piece, but it was not a dead chess game, so he notified several core members of the Rovno gang.
Of course, at the public level, even if some other people with keen intuition roughly guessed, they would not get confirmation from Simon.
As for Tymoshenko and the Rovne gang getting closer and closer, in Ukraine now, whether it is the Kiev faction or the Donetsk gang in Eastern Ukraine, they are all very close to the Rovne gang. On the other hand, the Rovno Gang is a behemoth of the Westeros system behind the scenes. On the other hand, the Rovno Gang not only does not compete with everyone for the assets left over from the former Soviet Union, but also shares various lucrative profits through cooperation. Such a force, who would not Willing to make friends?
Tymoshenko is not conspicuous among them.
The two sides approached, and after a warm handshake, Komorov looked at the brand-new cars on the track and said with a smile, "Yulia, you really helped us a lot."
With the rapid development of Rivni, the limitation of transportation capacity has also become a short board restricting the development of the city.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union
The railway system, which has not been updated, is still second to none. In the past two years, what bothered Livni the most was the serious shortage of train wagons, the main force of freight transportation. Whether it is to import raw materials or export products, a large number of wagons are needed. As for the Rivno gang, there will be disputes in order to fight for the wagon.
Apparently seeing this business opportunity, Tymoshenko bought a locomotive factory in Odessa this year, specializing in the production of train wagons. Currently, it can steadily supply 50 new carriages to Rivny every week, which is exactly equivalent to a freight train. quantity.
Of course, this business is not limited to Tymoshenko.
Even Victor Pinchuk, the son-in-law of the president, had a hand in it, but Pinchuk mainly produces equipment such as train wheels and rails, and the carriages are only second. The equipment supply of the planned new railway station in the north of Rivni was taken over by Pinchuk.
Therefore, when Komorov said Tymoshenko was a great help, it was, of course, only a compliment.
After all, she is the boss's woman, and she is so capable, so it's always right to praise her.
Yulia Tymoshenko didn't get carried away either. With the same politeness, she looked at the workers who were busy loading the goods and asked, "I heard that you have opened up a new business this time?"
Komorov did not hide anything, nodded and said: "Yes, the cooperation with Aldi, a German cheap supermarket chain, has actually started since last year. At first, it only supplied simple flour, sugar and cooking oil. This time, four more Brand-new categories, candy, coffee, sausage and vodka, oh, all of them are our own brands, the sales are good after testing the water, and some marketing has been carried out, this is the first large-scale distribution.”
Ordinary people may not feel anything when they hear this, it's just everyday life, but Tymoshenko is envious.
As the "bread basket" of the former Soviet Union, Ukraine once supplied 20% of the flour, 40% of the edible oil and up to 80% of the sugar in the entire Soviet Union. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Ukraine's agricultural production also fell into collapse. It has only recovered to about half of the output in all aspects before the disintegration.
But it is still enough to earn foreign exchange through export on the basis of self-use.
Besides, on Rovno’s side, Tymoshenko generally knows that before this, it was only basic flour, sugar and edible oil business. The average daily output of Rivni was the volume of a train, about 40 to 60 wagons, three basic The output of food in the past year has reached one million tons, and the annual revenue is expected to exceed 600 million US dollars.
Even if the profit margin of the three basic foods is very low, the average net profit rate is only about 5%, and it is expected to bring a net profit of 30 million US dollars to the Rovno Gang.
30 million US dollars may not be a big deal to the little man behind all this, but in Ukraine, it is a deal that makes many people jealous.
Now, obviously one step further.
For products such as highly processed candy, sausages and vodka, the profit margin is not just 5%.
Besides coffee, Ukraine does not produce coffee beans. Tymoshenko knows that these are imported from Africa, processed in Rivni and then exported to Western Europe. Different from locally produced and sold flour and other products, the profits will also be high.
Seeing the big from the small, this kind of further improvement undoubtedly means that the strength of the Rovno gang is rapidly increasing.