Don't you have a little pressure in your own mind?

William secretly scolded himself in his heart.

Until 1987, Rolls-Royce was 100% owned by the UK government.

It was not until Margaret Thatcher came to power and in the process of promoting the privatization of private state-owned enterprises that the British government sold all of Rolls-Royce at a total share capital of 800 million and 1 million pounds sterling per share by way of stock listing, retaining only one gold share, that is, a special rights share.

Never.

This does not seem to fit the definition of a free market in the UK.

With the value of Rolls-Royce, who doesn't want to take full control of it, how can there be no actual controller.

But the word "free" is itself a false proposition.

Any country, whether in speech or deed, will inevitably be subject to certain constraints.

Although Britain is an old capitalist country and is also known as a free market country, it still has a variety of protective policies in terms of trade and economy.

The UK Securities Commission stipulates that the equity of any individual or legal person must be declared to the public. If the shareholding exceeds 23%, the entire stake must be bought by bidding.

And a gold stock held by the British government can be understood as imprisonment.

It means the reservation of special rights.

Specifically, Rolls-Royce cannot be merged or amended by any other company without the approval of the government, foreign shareholders must hold no more than 29.5% of the shares, and the chairman, chief deacon, and 75% of the board members must be British citizens.

These few points alone are enough to dispel the possibility of any foreign capital taking control of Rolls-Royce.

As if that weren't enough, Rolls-Royce has several multiple insurances in its management mechanism.

If the Securities Commission stipulates that if the shareholding exceeds 23%, it must bid to buy the entire share, so that all companies in the UK do not have absolute controlling shareholders.

Of course, this also includes Rolls-Royce, and even Rolls-Royce was forced to buy all of Bentley's shares when he bought Bentley.

According to the regulations of the Securities Commission, Rolls-Royce is as dispersed as other listed companies, with a total of more than 500,000 shareholders, the vast majority of whom are minority shareholders and a few are major shareholders. Among these minority shareholders, 15 public funds own more than 40 percent of Rolls-Royce's total shares, and the largest fund holds about 15 percent of the total shares.

Due to the fact that the shareholding is quite dispersed, and the major shareholders are all fund institutions that will not directly participate in the operation and management of the enterprise, there is no representative of the major shareholder on the board of directors of the company, and no individual shareholder has control over the board of directors.

In the U.S., the chairman and president are often held by one person on a part-time basis.

But in the UK it is different.

Rolls-Royce's overarching management body is the Board of Directors, which consists of thirteen members, including eight Managing Directors and five Non-Executive Directors. The Managing Director is a full-time salaried business manager at Rolls-Royce, including the Chairman, President and Directors of various divisions.

The five non-executive directors are all part-time external staff, many of whom are senior managers of other companies, university experts and professors, and even retired politicians. They are responsible for overseeing the evaluation of the chairman, president and other managing directors, as well as determining their remuneration and proposing to the general meeting of shareholders a list of candidates for the annual re-election of directors.

It can only be similar to the supervisory boards of other countries.

According to Rolls-Royce's articles of association, the term of office of directors is three years, and one-third of each term is replaced, and they are re-elected.

How can such a company be controlled?

There's no control at all.

Shen Jiannan, a Chinese national, blocked all roads on the point that foreign shareholders should not hold more than 29.5 percent of the shares.

Even in the name of other shareholders and funds, the special authority held by the British government has blocked the way.

What's more, there are also the constraints and constraints of the company's management.

Anyway, William thought about it for a long time, and he didn't understand the point of buying Rolls-Royce shares, so it was better to go to other companies to pull a wave of prices and cut a little leek.

There's no loophole to exploit!

"Boss. I don't think there's any point in us buying Rolls-Royce's shares. We may not get anything to gain except to help them get out of their predicament. Do you want to eat their dividends? They had the highest profit margin last year, only five pennies, which is a loss of money, and I don't think it's much of a drop anyway. ”

"William. Didn't I tell you that in the capital market, there is never anything impossible, only everything is possible?"

When did you say that?

"We don't have the superpower to change those rules. ”

"Congratulations, that's right. We don't have superpowers, but we do. ”

"......" Chinese

Hanging up the phone, Shen Jiannan puffed on his cigar and walked to the terrace of the office.

In William's eyes, Rolls-Royce's management mechanism is naturally impeccable, or in other words, for people in this era, there is no control loophole in Rolls-Royce.

But these, for a thirty-year-old hanging, are not pediatrics.

In the past 30 years, the world's major companies have played out many battles between capital and government, and how many hostile takeovers and mergers have been staged.

If you want to take control of Rollo, it's not that complicated at all.

What's more, even if you don't get Rolls-Royce's absolute control, with the depreciation of the pound, it will soon stimulate the growth of the British economy, and Rolls-Royce's stock will rise at a geometric rate, which is completely a profitable and loss-making business.

But if you take it, it will be a great benefit.

Probably because of a rain, the weather today looks exceptionally clear, with clear skies and blue skies and white clouds, and a breeze blowing through it, making people feel very comfortable. 、

Gently exhaling the smoke from his mouth, Shen Jiannan looked in the southeast direction, his dark eyes flashing with bursts of crystal color.

Who would have thought that this era is an era of reversal of the way of heaven and changes in the world.

In this battle of national fortunes, who would have thought that from now on, the rabbit that has become harmless to humans and animals will have brighter and brighter eyes.

The night is gradually coming.

As night fell, the canopy of darkness gradually enveloped the entire city of London.

But it doesn't get dark, with all sorts of neon lights and street lights lit up to make it look like a night pearl floating on the sea.

London's upper-class residential area, Mayfair Park Road.

The Grosvenor House Hotel is like a long dragon that shimmers with golden light, and the Georgian architecture is so elegant and luxurious that you don't even have to step inside.

Under the bright lights, from the entrance of Hyde Park to the hotel gate and parking lot, police cars with flashing lights patrolled or parked nearby, and many uniformed police officers or plainclothes swept around vigilantly.

Even the Metropolitan Police couldn't leave work on time as usual, so they had to keep an eye on the security situation near the Grosvenor House Hotel.

Because, tonight, there will be a top-level party here, and there will be celebrities and multinational businessmen from many countries around the world, and no one dares to let any accidents happen here.

"Barty. Do you know who those bastards are?"

"I knew at a glance that it must be the personal bodyguards of the rich people. ”

"How damn rich people are afraid of death. They already have so many bodyguards here, and they still want us to keep them safe, and I'm already off work now, but I still have to work overtime here. ”

“......”

Not far from the hotel, two police officers sat in a police car complaining that they had to be sent to work overtime after work.

But alas, their complaints were simply ignored.

For those who asked them to work overtime, police overtime is nothing to mention compared to the current state of the economy.

During the week of the pound's depreciation, the French franc was under tremendous pressure, and French Finance Minister Michel Sapan even publicly suggested that all troublesome currency speculators be guillotined.

Neighbouring Belgium is not doing well, and Foreign Minister Willy Kress has even said that Britain has connived at the recklessness of currency speculators and allowed financiers to plot to divide Europe.

Of course, he will not admit that this is because the Belgian franc was attacked by international speculators during the day, and although the price of the Belgian franc was eventually protected by raising interest rates, the Belgian bank lost three billion francs.

And the International Monetary Fund writes about the resulting capital inflows to the countries of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism:

One of the key factors contributing to capital inflows is the growing perception by international investors that interest rate differentials in favour of high-yielding European Exchange Rate Mechanism currencies will increasingly overestimate the actual risk of exchange rate depreciation in the context of the fact that the EFEM member countries are in a process of moving closer to the European Monetary Unit.

As one equity portfolio manager put it: "Why stare at the yields in the West German mark government bonds when you can get a higher yield from the Peseta or the lira without taking on compensatory risks?"

However, another view of the fixed exchange rate assumption is that the risk of trading positions against non-EEP currencies is usually hedged by "alternative hedging". For example, when obtaining lira securities, a hedging of a Deutsche Mark position against the US dollar is done.

The preference for convergent trading can be seen almost everywhere.

One equity portfolio manager claimed that it was seen as the equivalent of "government-sponsored hedging transactions."

The European Exchange Rate Mechanism has fueled the alarming popularity of a new class of money market mutual funds, which specialize in trading short-term securities of foreign governments with high interest rates.

According to Morningstar's estimates, during 1989~1992, these funds absorbed more than $20 billion from investors.

The main securities investment behavior of these funds is convergence trading. As for the overall size of market positions, the IMF reported: "Rough estimates, the total size of convergence deals could reach $300 billion." ”