Wheelock's acquisition, the news came and went quickly.

On January 16, 1985, the fourth day of the public offer, Hutchison Whampoa Group publicly announced that it already owned 52% of the shares of Wheelock and would launch a general offer for 15% of the market price of the shares before the acquisition.

Hutchison Whampoa Group never pays dividends, which makes all investors grit their teeth, even though they hold tens of billions of Hong Kong dollars in their hands, but they refuse to distribute them to shareholders at all.

Wheelock now has more than half of the shares in the hands of Hutchison, and even if some shareholders reject the purchase price, Wheelock will inevitably implement Hutchison's policy of not paying dividends in the future.

There is no right to speak and no dividends, which naturally leads to a large number of shareholders thinking twice and then selling the stocks in their hands.

A week later, Hutchison acquired 90.3% of Wheelock's shares, entering the final step of the acquisition, forcibly delisting and fully privatizing.

Within a month, Hutchison held more than a dozen talks with Wharf's delegation, and Hutchison resold all of Wheelock's non-premium assets to Wharf, leaving only three core companies: Federal Land, Lane Crawford and Wheelock Shipping.

The core assets of Federal Land are Wheelock House and a number of shops in Central and Kowloon, all of which are part of Hongkong Land.

Lane Crawford was naturally merged into Watsons and became an independent high-end department store brand.

Wheelock changed its name to Hutchison Shipping, and because of the heavy losses, Hutchison also allocated HK$300 million separately to maintain its operations and wait for the shipping market to recover.

And hundreds of other small companies, involving a lot of types, from car repair to barber chains, from hardware and electromechanical to plastic products companies, everything, but the scale is very small, although these companies are operating independently, many are still profitable, but Hutchison obviously does not look down, arranged a special intermediary company, all listed for sale.

At this point, Wheelock, once one of the four major foreign banks in Xiangjiang, completely disappeared. Among the four major foreign firms, only the Swire Group and the Jardine Matheson Group, which began to evacuate from Hong Kong after losing its land.

......

Prince's Tower, Central, the temporary headquarters of Midea Group:

"Chairman, all our negotiations with Shanghu City have ended, and Shanghu City has set aside a 1,000-acre plot of land for us in Anting District for the construction of the first phase of the new factory, and the nearby farmland will also be used as a reserve for the second and third phases in the future. He Guoyuan came to the company early in the morning and reported the good news.

Although the two sides have reached an agreement, but a multi-billion-dollar investment project, it is impossible to start immediately without discussing the details, from October last year to February this year, three months, the negotiation team of the two sides finally reached an agreement, this speed has been very fast in the business world.

Xu Zhidao: "Okay, the construction of the factory should be as fast as possible, how is the procurement of production equipment?"

"I was trying to report this to you. He Guoyuan said: "Huo Jianning sent several inspection teams to Europe last year, they have reached an agreement of intent with Siemens, the new production line is estimated to arrive in Shanghai at the beginning of next year, when the infrastructure of the factory is almost completed, and now the domestic team is doing preliminary preparations in Shanghai." ”

"Okay, I'm still very relieved of Huo Jianning's ability. Xu Zhi nodded and said: "If this progress is followed, by the end of next year, the first phase of the price war will start in the United States, and in terms of sales channels, you have to pay more attention to the progress of the American team." ”

"The chairman can rest assured that I have allocated another $50 million for the expansion of the U.S. sales team and advertising, plus Best Buy has almost covered the big cities in the U.S., once the price war starts, the channel will definitely not be a problem. He Guoyuan assured.

Xu Zhi nodded and said: "Okay, we have invested more resources in the United States, Asia is our home market, and the weakest is Europe, the European market may enter last, but it also needs to be well prepared!"

"Chairman, the color TV market in Europe is not the main market for Japanese electronics giants, is it necessary for us to have a price war in Europe?" asked He Guoyuan.

"Of course it's necessary. Xu Zhi said with a smile: "If you think about it, it is difficult for even Japanese brands to enter the European market, which also shows that the market there must be very resistant to Asian brands, how can we enter without relying on low prices."

But this is at least in the 90s, and it's hard to say what will change in the future, so we'll see later. ”

"Okay, I see. He Guoyuan nodded, took out a piece of information from the document bag, handed it to Xu Zhi, and said, "Chairman, this is the revenue and profit data of all departments of Midea Company last year. ”

Xu Zhi took it, flipped it twice, and said, "Let's talk about it!"

The financial statements of regular large companies are more complicated, and Xu Zhi can certainly understand them, but he also needs to study them carefully.

He Guoyuan also understood the temperament of the boss and reported: "Chairman, at present, the main profitable departments of Midea are games, software, personal computers, and household appliances.

In the gaming division, the global arcade machine sales reached 400,000 units last year, with a net profit of $280 million. 5.6 million home game consoles were sold, and a total of 83 million game cartridges were sold, with a total profit of $460 million. The total sales of the Gameboy are 18 million units, but the profit is not high, only 20 million US dollars, and some game sales on personal computers, which are almost 30 million US dollars.

In terms of software, WordExcel has the best sales, suitable for most of the computers on the market, and PPT has higher hardware requirements, which is difficult to popularize at present, and others such as CAD and painting software have high unit price profits, but the market is limited, and the net profit of the entire software department last year was 180 million US dollars.

In terms of personal computers, last year, we sold a total of 720,000 units of the four models of the Honor brand, with a total profit of $263 million.

As for household appliances, last year, the global sales of color TVs were 8.8 million units, and the OEM was about 2.5 million units, while the sales of household air conditioners and refrigerator products were not high, with 800,000 units and 1.4 million units respectively. Because we built the factory ourselves, we lost $56 million when the investment cost was amortized.

In addition, we have some factories, semiconductor memory chips, LCD factories, and our own assembly plants, but these are all internal transactions, so their data does not appear in the final financial report. ”

Xu Zhi listened to the report, and at the same time looked at the information in his hand according to the data, combined, and immediately had a direct sense, and said: "The total profit of 1.16 billion US dollars is indeed very good, according to the data of Forbes last year, our company's profit is enough to enter the top 20 in the United States, but we also belong to the one-legged advance, the game is almost our lifeblood, and in the next few years, we must invest more resources in the personal computer." ”

In the 80s, among the global enterprises that could reach this level, they were all influential supergiants, such as IBM, General Electric, Boeing, or the top few in the automobile, oil industry, bancassurance, retail and other industries.

Midea may be comparable to these giant companies in terms of net profit, but its actual influence is too far behind, and the rapid development of the personal computer market can fill this gap.

He Guoyuan said: "We have reached an agreement with IBM, and soon the personal computer market will explode rapidly, and at that time, whether it is hardware or software, our revenue will increase significantly." ”

"Well, the personal computer will determine whether our Midea can become the world's top electronics company, otherwise, no matter how much money you make with games, you won't be able to make a big deal. Xu Zhi shook his head and said with a smile, Nintendo and Blizzard in later generations, no matter how well they mix in the game field, compared with Sony, Panasonic, HP, and Dell, they are one level worse, even if the market value or profit is high.