After the stock market crash broke out, the saddest days were, of course, the major shareholders of Wang An Computer Company, who were far away on the other side of the ocean.

It is extremely unfortunate for any company to lose three-quarters of its market capitalization.

However, specifically for Wang An's father and son, there is still a little luck in the misfortune, that is, Citibank, which accepted their family's equity pledge, failed to ship in time this time, so those shares have not been forced to liquidate, but are still in a pledged state.

Banks are certainly the most cautious type of financial unit in lending, and they are basically unsecured and unpledged, and they will not give you a huge amount of róng zī.

But since banks also have so many bad debts, this shows that the tricks of collateral and collateral are not always in luck.

These measures can only defend against individual defaults, and are relatively powerless against the decline of the overall industry.

For example, when a mortgage buyer defaults, the bank can take the house and auction it off, and use the auction proceeds to fill in the loan account. But when the subprime mortgage crisis or the property market crash came, tens of thousands of home buyers were cut off, and the banks themselves, which had taken in so many houses at once, also became landlords and couldn't get rid of them for a while.

The stock market is also the same, at the same time, there are too many stocks that crash, everyone is rushing to flee for their lives, and banks have to face the problem of not having time to run.

For Wang An and his son, Citibank can't get rid of it for the time being, which means that the company's shareholder structure will not change, and the Wang family's control of the company has not been lost, and there is still a chance to struggle.

At this juncture, it is useless to rely on the king.

Wang An, who retired for 15 months because of cancer, dragged his sick body again, forced his son to change the legal representative back to Lao Tzu, and transferred some other procedures back. Then Wang An personally looked at his face and called his old friend from Citibank:

"Mr. Gibson, please reconsider our request. As you know, this stock price crash is not due to any mismanagement of our company itself, but to systemic risk on the Nasdaq as a whole.

Anyway, you didn't make a move at the first time, and according to the current stock price, the part of the shares we pledged is far from enough to pay off the amount of your bank's mortgage loan, and even half of it can't be repaid.

This means that even if you find an opportunity to forcibly ship in the future, you will be able to settle the current bad debts at most, and once the pledge is enforced, you and I will not have anything to owe each other, and I will not be obliged to repay the subsequent eighty percent of the money.

In that case, why don't you take a chance? As long as you give me a chance to reorganize, I may have a chance to get a lot more than 20% of the amount of money in the future, so why not gamble?"

Wang An's personal and sincere plea also made the senior executive of Citibank, Mr. Gibson, who had approached his big customer, hesitate.

Just as according to the conventional principle of the Bankruptcy Law, most companies should be liquidated when they are very poor and insolvent. However, sometimes, when the liquidation team calculates the company's remaining executable assets, it finds that even if it is liquidated, everyone's debts can only be repaid by two or three percent or even less, which is almost useless.

In this case, there are also creditors who are willing to gamble, giving you a chance to eliminate the disadvantages and improve the operation, in case the bet is right, you can get back a few percent.

Of course, when such a reorganization takes place, it will certainly no longer be run casually by the original management, and it may be necessary to have external observers sent to monitor the financial performance, or some other check and balance mechanism.

Mr. Gibson repeatedly confirmed on the phone, and said that he would ask for instructions, hold an internal meeting with Citi to discuss, and then call Wang An back.

Then it dragged on for a long time, and it was not until the evening of the same day that Gibson called Wang An back as promised.

"Now that the enforcement of equity is indeed not much back, you have accumulated 1.5 billion US dollars by equity pledge in our bank, and when we accepted your part of the pledge, its market value was more than 2 billion.

But now, this part is only worth 400 million, even if we successfully close the position, 11 billion dollars will disappear, from the perspective of personal emotion and business reason, I have tried my best to persuade the company to accept your request. But "

Gibson dragged a long note, eager to pass on his solemn and serious expression to Wang An through the phone line.

Wang An also understood: "If there are any additional requirements, although it is our own stock price plummeting, we should accept supervision and bear all responsibilities."

Gibson coughed lightly, cleared his throat and said: "We can't trust your son's business ability, if you hadn't forcibly handed over last year, bought back co-founder Kaningham, and kicked out a large number of key executives such as CMO John Chambers, your business situation would have fallen to the way it is today?"

As for your own repetition...... Personally, with our decades of friendship, I am willing to believe you. However, I will also tell you bluntly, the people on our board of directors do not believe that with your health, you can still have the energy to handle related business and help the company innovate and transform.

So, I'll tell you straight, we Citi ask you to change to a trustworthy and remedial CEO on Wall Street, and it's best to find someone who is satisfactory to you and me, if you really can't find it, then find one that only we are satisfied with, it doesn't matter if you are not satisfied.

In exchange, you can continue to hold the equity of the family, but hand over the management rights during the rectification period. ”

Humiliation!

Wang An knew full well that Gibson's words were just to comfort him.

What "you can continue to hold the equity of the family" is completely a delaying tactic.

According to the law and the pledge róng zī contract, as long as the stock price rises back for a period of time, and it is stable and deceived to someone to take over, Citi will directly sell the shares in batches and ship them.

If there is more out there, Wang An's shareholding will be less, and it will soon fall below 50%.

Unless Wang An can ensure that the company's stock price rises back by 4 times or more during the rectification period after introducing outsiders for rectification, he can avoid that when Citigroup ships sign the rectification period, there are generally conditional restrictions on the sale of the pledgee, which is not about the same size as the stock market.

This rectification period is generally one year.

The nature is that "if the rectification party sincerely rectifies in accordance with the supervision and operation requirements of the pledgee, and the situation is indeed improving, then the pledgee cannot sell and change the equity at will during the one-year rectification period".

However, if the stock price performance continues to deteriorate during the rectification period, the pledgee can break the contract at any time. It is equivalent to half of the size of the non, "within a year the increase in the sale limit, the fall is not restricted".

Although he knew all this conspiracy, and despite the grievances in his heart, Wang An could only give up his old face and ask: "So, Mr. Gibson, ......is there a list of trustworthy rectification candidates at Citi?

"Of course, there is a list, you can understand them one by one and do your best. Gibson's tone suddenly relaxed, and he said that after making this call, he would fax Wang An a detailed information.

These are the lackey-type professional managers trusted by Wall Street, especially Citibank.

……

Wang An communicated with Gibson for a few days, and finally tentatively circled a successor: Edward Miller, a professional manager recommended by Citibank.

That's one of Wall Street's favorite financial restructuring gurus, and he knows a thing or two about how to keep companies down, make high financial statements, and cater to stock market preferences.

To take an example that all of you officials know, it is the same type as John Charber, CEO of Deyi, who ousted Zhang Zhongmou from Texas Instruments a few years ago.

This kind of person may not have the ability to organize enterprise research and development and formulate long-term strategies, because they are all from a financial background. But if you want to squeeze out the long-term potential of the company, in exchange for the financial performance on the books in the short term, it is very good.

Their tricks are like the "Heavenly Demon Disintegration Dà Fǎ" in traditional martial arts, which sacrifices life and health in exchange for the explosive power of the Demon Sect in an instant.

Let the sluggish enterprise take a burst of overdose of adrenaline, and the retrospective light will look better, and then take advantage of the juncture of the retrospective light to trick the Shabi shareholders into taking over the plate, and after receiving the disc, the effect of the xīng fèn jì drug disappears, and quickly escape.

If nothing else, this Edward Miller will take over as CEO and president of Ang Wang.

The so-called "no accidents" refers to the fact that during this period of time, there were no external investors who were able to get a satisfactory stop-loss price from Citibank to take over the equity.

At this moment, if Gu Biao was also at the scene and could hear Gibson's phone communication with Wang An, maybe he would suddenly realize:

It turned out that in the original history, in 1988, Wang An ordered his son to hand over all power and hand over to Edward Miller to reorganize the company, which was actually such a background.

Wang An's external publicity, of course, will emphasize that "it is I myself who can see my son's ability clearly, and I can see the fact that the tiger father and dog son are clear, so for the sake of the company." I chose to bring in an external professional manager as the CEO. ”

But that's just officialdom. The real situation, maybe the reason of the tiger father and the dog son accounts for half of the reason, and the pressure of the stock pledgee accounts for half, and the two reasons are five or five.

And now, because of Gu Biao's early detonation of the technology stock market crash, Wang An's decision had to be followed a few months earlier from the beginning of 88, and he faced this difficult choice in August 87.

At the same time, because the stock price performance and the external environment have deteriorated, the pressure on the pledgee has also increased.

In this life, even if the two reasons of "tiger father and dog son" and "pledgee order" are forced, let's open it.

Anyway, the official announcement can't be fully believed, it's all after some pretence. Smart people know that they only believe it after translating the false.

After more than 10 days of mutual contact and inspection, in mid-August, Edward Miller himself went to Wang An Computer Company for the first time, sat down with the current senior management of Wang An Computer and had a detailed discussion about the rectification strategy.

It seems that Citibank's plan to send a spokesperson to rectify Wang An's computer will soon be on the right track. 6