Stuttgart, Germany, Promethea's Stuttgart plant.

The factory covering an area of more than 1,000 acres is silent, and there is no hustle and bustle of the past machine. On the main road of the factory, there is no scene of workers and vehicles shuttling back and forth, occasionally one or two employees walk by, and the figure also looks lonely and helpless, no longer has the vigorous or arrogant momentum of the past.

Stuttgart plant is Prometheyer's construction machinery assembly plant, only 10 years ago, the cement concrete pump trucks produced by this factory accounted for 40% of the global market share, for Promethethe to win the reputation of "elephant".

And it was from that time that the "elephants" were eaten by "ants" from China. A group of enterprises led by China Chenyu Construction Machinery Co., Ltd. has launched its own brand of concrete pump trucks, which has attracted the attention of many third world construction companies with low prices and high-quality services, and has carved up Promai's share of the construction market in these countries.

At first, Prometheus did not have much concern about this, and its management firmly believed that with its technical strength, it would be able to crush Chinese companies in the market no matter what. Chinese enterprises rely on low cost, at best can find a place in poor places such as Southeast Asia and Africa, Europe and the United States such developed country markets, will not fall into the hands of Chinese, and as we all know, the European and American market is the most important market for construction machinery.

Later, things gradually got out of Promai's control. After gaining the third world market, Chinese enterprises continue to invest the profits obtained from the market into research and development, and the technical level and quality of products continue to improve, and the technical gap with Prometheus products is narrowing day by day. At the same time, China's domestic infrastructure scale is expanding rapidly, making China the world's largest construction machinery market, and Chen Yu and other Chinese enterprises have the right time, location, and people, in the Chinese market to do well, the speed of product replacement is dizzying.

In contrast, Prometheus' pump truck technology is still stuck in the last century, and the company's management misjudged the situation and was unwilling to spend huge sums of money to update the technology. Two or three years ago, Prometheus finally found that its European and American customers had also turned to China, and began to abandon Prometheus and purchase pump trucks from China. By this time, Prometheus was powerless to do anything about it, and its global market share of pump trucks quickly fell to less than 10%.

It is enough to be proud of a Chinese company with a global market share of 10%. But Prometheus' situation is different, because the amortization of its management costs is huge, and if it does not have a large enough market share to support it, then the whole company will fall into a state of serious loss. In fact, since three years ago, Promethe's construction machinery business has suffered large losses, after three years of hard support, Prometheus Group headquarters had to choose a strong man to break his wrist, announced that the construction machinery department was all suspended, and publicly listed on the market for transfer.

Prometheus Group did this, but it was also a helpless move. Prometheus is a large industrial equipment group with many businesses, and construction machinery is just one of them. However, in addition to construction machinery, Prometheus' business in offshore drilling platforms, shield machines, wind turbines and other areas has also encountered difficulties, all of which are related to competition from China.

Compared with its Chinese counterparts, Prometheus is still a behemoth, with strong strength, advanced technology, and unattainable brand influence. However, Chinese companies have the strength of wolves devouring tigers, once a company has made a breakthrough in a technology, it will share this technology with other peers, so as to unite the strength of a dozen or dozens of companies to compete with Prometheus for the market.

Taking the shield machine as an example, a few years ago, Chen Yu Construction Machinery Company beat Pumai in the bidding for the Huoyuan subway project in China, and then Chen Yu shared this technology with several other shield machine companies in China. After these enterprises obtain the technology, in the bidding of subway engineering equipment in various places, they have launched a desperate fight with a group of foreign manufacturers, including Pumai, and quickly increased the equipment localization rate of the shield machine market from less than 10% to more than 80%, and foreign manufacturers can only maintain the market in some technically difficult engineering projects, and the conventional shield market has been occupied by Chinese enterprises.

The wind power equipment market is another story, where Chinese companies have used large-scale production to reduce costs, not only excluding European wind turbine companies from the Chinese market, but also winning a large number of OEM orders from Europe. Industrial production is to meet the Matthew effect, the larger the production scale, the lower the production cost, and the low production cost can induce other enterprises to give up production, the order in hand to the low production cost of the enterprise OEM.

This is the case between China and Europe, where a large number of European wind power companies, after discovering that China's wind turbine costs are much lower than those in Europe, have moved their production to China by outsourced OEM or established joint ventures with Chinese companies. Putto's hatred of China made it difficult for him to accept the way of cooperation with China, and as a result, because of the high cost of production, he lost his original share of the European market.

When the management realized that something was wrong and planned to go to China to seek OEM cooperation like their peers, several powerful Chinese companies claimed that their production orders were full and it was difficult to accept Prometheus' commission. However, there are some local small wind turbine companies that claim to be able to receive orders from Promethe, but Prometheus sent engineers to inspect it and found that the production qualifications of these enterprises are suspicious.

Several major business directions have gone wrong, and Prometheus' financial reports are getting more and more ugly year by year. Shareholders began to challenge the management, demanding that the management take effective measures to turn the situation around. The management knows that their problems are in fact problems that exist in all European companies, and that there is no cure for the ills of wealth brought about by the extravagant lifestyle. However, it is not clear to shareholders that what the management can do is to prepare an ambitious revitalization plan, claiming to invest billions of euros in entering emerging areas, and in order to raise these funds, it is necessary to divest some non-performing assets and sell these assets for money, and the construction machinery division is the first department that the group management chooses to sell.

Executives at the management know that investing billions of euros into new areas is just an explanation of the capital markets, and in fact, it is difficult to find any good new areas to invest in in Europe.

The Americans will not let go of the fields with high technical requirements and lucrative profits, and European companies cannot compete with American companies. Fields with low technical requirements, whether they are profitable or not, are all dishes in the basket of Chinese, and it is not the turn of European companies to stretch their mouths. What remains is a field with high technical requirements and low profits, such a field that the Americans disdain to do, and which is difficult for the Chinese to achieve for a while, seems to be reserved for Europeans.

But the problem lies in the fact that Europeans don't like this kind of field either! In terms of the degree of pampering, Europeans are even more powerful than Americans, and not to mention that the United States is now the world's number one power; in the eyes of Europeans, Americans are just a bunch of uneducated and tasteless barbarians, so why should they compare them with our old European aristocracy? Even Americans are too lazy to make money, and Europeans are even less interested in making money.

The sole effect of the sale of the construction machinery division is to allow Prometheus to receive a revenue that can be used to balance the financial statements and maintain the stock price for a period of time. When this money is spent, it is a big deal to sell another department, and you can breathe a sigh of relief. As for what to do if all the departments are sold, this is not a question that the current executives need to think about, by then they are already retired, what about the flood?

Once the strategy is set, finding an acquirer becomes a hassle again. Prometheus' construction machinery division was sold because of shrinking market share and serious losses, and unless the acquirer has the ability to reverse the situation, the result of the acquisition is still a loss, that is, it is purely with its own money. Throughout the Western world, whether it is European countries, the United States, or Japan, there is no company that can revive the strength of Prometheus' construction machinery. However, there are several companies that have taken a fancy to Prometheus' brand and some technologies and want to buy them and integrate them with their original products, but the purchase price they are willing to pay is so low that it is almost like a humiliation, and Prometheus' management cannot accept it in any way.

Just when the mountains and rivers were exhausted, a news came from the far east that a Chinese company called Chen Yu International Investment Company intends to acquire Prometheus Construction Machinery Co., Ltd., and the verbal commitment to the purchase price is about 2.5 billion euros, although it is still lower than the expectations of Prometheus Group, but it is also the best result that Prometheus can get.

Today, the representative of Chen Yu Guotou will go to the Stuttgart factory to negotiate with the Prometheus side, and the plenipotentiary representative sent by the Prometheus Group Heinzl and the trade officials sent by the European Union, Bovard and Emmeline, came to the factory early in the morning, waiting for the arrival of Chinese personnel.

"They're coming!"

Emmeline pointed ahead and said to the crowd.

A commercial car drove up in front of everyone, the door opened, and a group of people walked out of the car, most of them yellow-skinned Chinese, but also a few white-skinned Europeans, but these Europeans seemed to be below the Chinese. The first person, in his 40s, has a vigorous figure and an extraordinary temperament, his eyes are calm and calm, and there seems to be a faint smile on his face.

"Mr. Feng, we meet again, welcome to Europe, and hope we can reach a pleasant cooperation. ”

Bovard stepped forward and shook hands with the man, whom he recognized as the protagonist of the negotiations, Feng Xiaochen, chairman of the China Chenyu Group and general manager of the newly established Chenyu International Investment Company.