Chapter 74: One stone stirs up a thousand waves
July 6, 1978, Hutchison Whampoa Headquarters Building.
Today, Hutchison Whampoa held a press conference here.
Almost all large, medium and small media in Hong Kong are here.
Starting two days ago, the media have successively received invitations from Hutchison, inviting them to attend a press conference.
The content of the press conference has not been announced yet, so they don’t know either.
Everyone is speculating on what kind of thing happened that made Hutchison Whampoa personally invite all the media in Hong Kong, big and small.
Even reporters from some well-known international media based in Hong Kong were invited.
At around 9 o'clock in the morning, reporters from the media arrived at the scene one after another, signed in, and received admission passes. The work arrangement was very orderly.
The reporters all discussed it privately, but there really was no result from the discussion.
Recently, the focus of the media in Hong Kong has been basically on the battle for Wharf between Charter King and Jardine. The level of competition can be said to be the most intense in the history of Hong Kong.
On the contrary, the Hutchison Whampoa side only became popular for a few days, and no one paid much attention to it. After all, the competition at Wharf was more interesting and entertaining.
One side represents the Chinese-funded consortium, and the other side represents the British-funded consortium. More importantly, Huifeng Bank, the most powerful British-funded enterprise in Hong Kong, actually supports the Chinese-funded consortium. Therefore, eating There are more and more people.
There are few places in Xiangjiang that can gather so many reporters, unless something big happens, or a top company like Hutchison Whampoa.
Since so many media are invited here, it means that Hutchison Whampoa must have something very important to announce. As for what it is, we can only wait for the true identity to be revealed at the press conference.
At this time, hundreds of people gathered in the originally spacious hall on the first floor of the Hutchison Whampoa headquarters building.
Media reporters include well-known local media in Hong Kong such as TVB, Li's TV, Jiayi TV, Oriental Daily, Sin Chew Daily, Ming Pao, etc., as well as international media such as Associated Press, AFP, Wall Street Journal, BBC, etc. At the Hong Kong branch of the mainstream media, they were either holding long guns or short cannons, carrying cameras, or holding interview microphones, waiting for the press conference to begin.
It is worth noting that Jiayi TV, a Xiangjiang TV station established nearly three years ago, is already facing the crisis of bankruptcy. If nothing unexpected happens, Jiayi TV will go bankrupt next month.
However, in fact, Su City has already noticed this TV station, but has no plans to intervene for the time being. It has to let the bullets fly for a while to make it easier to take it down.
A TV station is of great significance. It can not only control public opinion, but also advertise its own products. Therefore, Su City itself has plans to win a TV station.
Although TVB and Li TV are better, they are not suitable for Sioux City. Both TV stations are developing very well now. Secondly, they have many shareholders. It would be too troublesome and costly to win them over.
But Jiayi TV is different. This TV station that is about to go bankrupt has become the best choice in Sioux City.
Due to the high cost of producing TV series for Jiayi, it resulted in serious losses. In addition, the Hong Kong government at that time paid more attention to education and required each TV station to use it for TV teaching purposes at specified times every day. It does not mean that only Jiayi Art TV had to broadcast educational programs at specified times. At that time, Jiayi only had one Chinese channel, and Li's and Wireless owned several Chinese channels. However, these educational programs were not popular with the audience and received poor ratings. In the end, they had to introduce the Lin family.
The most direct reason for the collapse of Jiayi is the introduction of the Lin family. The Lin family has a Chinese-funded background. This is the reason why the Hong Kong Governor forced Jiayi to close down. Otherwise, Jiayi would not have collapsed if the Lin family injected a large amount of capital in the later period.
In the later ATV's "Television Storm", it was very intuitively insinuated that the reason for the collapse of Jiashi was the Hong Kong Governor's refusal to allow Chinese capital to invest in Xiangjiang Electronic Media.
Su Cheng has no such worries at all. In this world, his identity is extremely innocent. His grandfather's generation came to Xiangjiang, and now he will not be involved in political struggles at all.
And with Xiao Ai's ability in variety shows, TV scripts, etc., it doesn't matter which TV station he controls for Su Cheng.
The camera returned to the scene on the first floor of Hutchison Whampoa Building. The time came to 9:55 a.m., and Hutchison Whampoa executives took their seats one by one.
These people include Wei Li, Richard Xin, Xia Boyin, Wei Peter, etc.
At this time, the media discovered a focus that attracted their attention. Wei Li did not sit in the center seat this time.
In the past, Hutchison Whampoa has also held press conferences. Even if Huifeng Bank sent people to attend, Wei Li would sit in the middle because he was Hutchison's senior manager. But today, Wei Li and Richard Xin were miraculously sitting on either side of the main seat, which was currently empty.
When the time came to 9:59 in the morning, Su Cheng, who was coming in a hurry, hurriedly detoured from the back of the media crowd to the front.
“There was a traffic jam on the road, but luckily we made it in time.” Su Cheng walked to the main seat and said to the Hutchison executives with a smile.
"Boss, you are here, I thought you would be late!" Weili said with a smile.
"Boss, please take a seat." Richard Xin stood up, making it easier for Su Cheng to walk to the main seat.
After two days, Wei Li has already done his ideological work. Now, everyone has recognized Su Cheng as the boss. In fact, it is useless not to recognize it, because Su Cheng has become the boss of Hutchison Whampoa. Already a fact.
As Su Cheng took the main seat, the media reporters frantically took photos. There were bursts of flashing lights at the scene, and the light was very dazzling.
"Please stop taking pictures first. I will be hosting this press conference. I hope that everyone can keep quiet when talking on the podium during the press conference. Otherwise, I will ask the security guards to kick you out. "Weili said unceremoniously to Mai.
At this moment, all the reporters stopped what they were doing. They knew Wei Li’s temper and knew that he meant what he said.
When the scene calmed down, Wei Li continued: "You must be very curious. This time, I invite you to come over. What big thing is happening in Hutchison Whampoa? I won't beat around the bush.
Here, I am announcing to the outside world. A major change regarding Hutchison Whampoa: From now on, Mr. Su Cheng will serve as the chairman of the board of directors of Hutchison Whampoa. I will continue to work for Hutchison Whampoa as CEO.
At the same time, Hutchison Whampoa. Whampoa will start the delisting process from now on, which means that Hutchison Whampoa will be privatized.”
“Wow!”
One stone stirred up waves, and all media reporters couldn’t help but sigh. Shout out.
What a shock!
These news are definitely big news that shocked the whole of Xiangjiang and attracted everyone's attention.
Sioux City took over Hutchison Taipan. Although this is a big news, it is not what shocked everyone the most.
After all, after the last transaction with Huifeng Bank, many people knew that the boss behind Tianyuan Company was actually a young man named Su Cheng.
He is already the majority shareholder of Hutchison Whampoa. It is normal to become Hutchison Whampoa's chief executive, it is just a matter of time.
What shocked everyone was that Hutchison Whampoa actually wanted to withdraw from the stock market and privatize!
You must know that the first condition for privatization is to hold at least 75% of the equity before the privatization process can be started.
Now that Hutchison Whampoa has launched the privatization process, doesn’t it mean that someone already controls 75% of Hutchison Whampoa’s equity?
At this time, Su Cheng became Hutchison Whampoa's chief executive, and everything pointed to him. The person behind this was Su Cheng.
This is definitely a historic moment, a moment that changes the landscape of British-funded and Chinese-funded enterprises!
Compared with this incident, suddenly the struggle at Wharf seemed nothing.
Even if the charter king wins, he will only become the head clerk of Wharf. Can he privatize Wharf? Almost impossible.
However, this young Chinese man in front of him has done it. He actually wants to privatize the Hutchison Whampoa Group, which is not inferior to the Wharf Group!
At this time, all the reporters directly ignored Wei Li's previous warning and wanted to ask more questions.
For a while, the scene was as noisy as a wet market.
Dear readers, Happy May Day!
(End of this chapter)