Just when the Xiangjiang media was hyping up the cooperation between Jianing, Zhong's and Hang Lung, Cheung Kong Group, one of the five traditional real estate tigers in Xiangjiang, was brewing a super acquisition of snakes swallowing elephants!

When the time entered 1979, the strength of Cheung Kong Industrial has gradually stood out among the five real estate tigers!

In this year, the area of buildings owned by Changshi has reached 14.5 million square feet, exceeding the 13 million square feet of Hongkong Land, and it has become a veritable 'landlord' in Xiangjiang!

Cheung Kong has successively cooperated with Wheelock, Kwong Sang Hong, Heung Kong Electric, Li Fung, Heung Kong Carpet and other established companies with a large number of cheap land to develop their properties, and formed a real estate company with Chinese company Kiu Kwong Real Estate to obtain the right to develop the property above Sha Tin MTR Station, and built a large-scale cement factory with Chinese companies in Treadstone Kok, Tuen Mun!

At the same time, Li Chaoren was also elected as a director of the ----- Huaxia International Trust and Investment Company (hereinafter referred to as CITIC Group), a ministerial-level company under the state government! At the same time, two patriotic Chinese businessmen, Huo Tsarhuang and Mr. Wang, were also elected as directors, and these two patriotic Chinese businessmen had long established close relations with the Huaxia government, and Li Chaoren's election also reflected that his status in the eyes of the government was rapidly rising!

Since the failure of sniping Wharf last year, Li Chaoren has not given up the idea of British-funded foreign banks, and his cooperation with HSBC has become increasingly close in the past two years, and he has also been appreciated by HSBC Taipan Shen Bi, so this year he once again pointed his attention to Hutchison Whampoa, one of the British-funded foreign banks!

Hutchison Whampoa's predecessor is Hutchison & Co. and Whampoa Dockyard, Hutchison & Co. is a long-established British & Co., founded in 1860, at the beginning of the establishment of Hutchison & Co. in the British-funded & Co., originally a third- or fourth-rate role, but after entering the 50s of the 20th century, the retired British Army Colonel Qi Dezun joined Hutchison & Co., and Hutchison & Co. rose rapidly in the 60s, known as the shining star in the Hong Kong stock market!

In the mid-60s, Qi Dezun acquired Hutchison & Co. through the international enterprises controlled by him, and changed its name to Hutchison International the following year, and since then Hutchison International has entered a new era of rapid expansion, and has successively acquired the famous old British-funded companies Whampoa Dockyard, Watsons, Kwan Yicang, Dehuibao & Co., Taihe & Co. and Qichang & Co., etc., with as many as 360 subsidiaries and associated companies in its heyday!

The business covers real estate, finance, insurance, hotels, shipping, docks, warehouses, wool textiles, automobiles, foreign wines, soft drinks, medicines, import and export trade, etc., known as the largest commercial organization in Hong Kong at that time, second only to Jardine Matheson!

It's a pity that Qi Dezun was too ambitious, over-attacked, and failed to consolidate his achievements in the stock market in time, the Xiangjiang stock market crash in 1973 and a major engineering contract in Indonesia in 1975 had a crisis, and the capital turnover was difficult, and he was on the verge of bankruptcy!

In September 1975, Hutchison International convened a general meeting of shareholders to ask shareholders to inject capital to resolve the company's financial crisis, which was rejected by the shareholders represented by HSBC. Hutchison International's creditors were ready to seek the company's liquidation through legal channels, and in the absence of any choice, the board of directors was forced to accept the acquisition of HSBC, and HSBC injected HK$150 million to purchase 90 million shares of Hutchison International, accounting for 33.65% of the issued shares.

At that time, HSBC had promised that once Hutchison International returned to profitability, HSBC would sell Hutchison International at an appropriate time, which also laid the groundwork for Li Chaoren to settle in Hutchison, of course, HSBC at that time was definitely not thinking about Li Chaoren!

After HSBC became the majority shareholder of Hutchison International, it invited Willy, known as the 'company doctor', to become the vice chairman of the board of directors and chief executive officer of Hutchison, and Hutchison entered the era of Willy!

At the end of 1977, Hutchison International was merged with its most important subsidiary, Whampoa Docks, to form Hutchison Whampoa.

The reason why Li Chaoren set his sights on Hutchison is because Li Chaoren was counterattacked by the major shareholder Jardine Matheson in the first acquisition of Wharf in the first battle.

However, since the resignation of Qi Dezun, Hutchison has lacked a major family shareholder, and its equity is distributed in the hands of many shareholders, and the acquisition of Hutchison will not be met with stubborn resistance from the major family shareholder, the war will be much calmer, and the price paid will be very small!

Secondly, after HSBC acquired Hutchison, it had already promised that it would sell Hutchison at the appropriate time. According to Heung's Companies and Banking Laws, banks cannot engage in non-financial business, and creditor banks can take over financially distressed enterprises, but when they are on the right track, they must sell them to the original owners or other investors.

Among the investors who are suitable for acquiring Hutchison shares, the Qi Dezun family has gone bankrupt and cannot afford to acquire huge shares, and the charter ship king, who has a good relationship with HSBC, is staring at the Wharf at this time, and has no time to care!

Li Chaoren has achieved a good cooperative relationship with HSBC early, and has established a good friend relationship with Shen Bi, coupled with Li Chaoren's Changshi's gradually stronger strength, and in the Wharf acquisition war, HSBC owes Li Chaoren a favor and a series of reasons, Li Chaoren has become the most suitable candidate!

There is another reason for this, that is, after Wei Li served as the president of Hutchison, as he successfully turned Hutchison into a profit, he began to become arrogant and arrogant, and sometimes he didn't even talk about Shen Bi in his eyes, for such a person, Shen Bi naturally couldn't tolerate it!

In view of the lessons learned from the leakage of news during the acquisition of Wharf, Li Chaoren and HSBC Shen Bi secretly negotiated the matter many times, and finally Shen Bi replied to Li Chaoren: as long as the conditions are right, Cheung Kong Industrial's proposal will provide an opportunity for HSBC to sell Hutchison Whampoa ordinary shares in an orderly manner at the appropriate time!

However, although Li Chaoren and Shen Bi have reached an agreement, it is still not so easy to buy Hutchison's shares, because HSBC also has two major foreign companies, Jardine Matheson and Swire, among the directors!

Both Shi Yihe and Swire are eyeing Hutchison, hoping to bring Hutchison, a giant that has set sail again, under their own banner!

Therefore, if Shen Bi proposes to sell Hutchison's shares to Li Chaoren at the board of directors of HSBC, then it will definitely get strong opposition from Jardine Matheson and Swire, and the news leak will definitely add a lot of twists and turns to the acquisition!

September 25, 1979, 4 p.m.

Under the chairmanship of HSBC Chairman Shen Bi, the board of directors of HSBC held a confidential meeting to discuss the sale of HSBC's shares in Hutchison to Li Chaoren!

The directors present at the meeting included Shen Bi, John Bao, Mou Shili, Peter Wei, Madden, Ross, Charter King, etc., and the shareholder representatives of Jardine Matheson and Swire were not present.

The meeting lasted two hours and ended at 6 a.m., and in the absence of representatives from the shareholders of Jardine Matheson and Swire, the board of directors of HSBC agreed to Shen Bi's proposal to sell the ordinary shares of Hutchison to Cheung Kong Asset!

The meeting ended at 6 o'clock, and at 6:30 a.m., HSBC and Cheung Kong officially signed the acquisition contract!

Except for Shen Bi and John Bao, the other directors did not know anything about the content of this meeting in advance, and it can be said that it was a highly confidential business transaction!

In the evening, Cheung Kong and HSBC announced the acquisition decision at the same time!

At this time, the citizens of Xiangjiang are staying in front of the TV, their mouths are wide open, and they can't believe that all this is true! I want to talk about "The Feast of the Wealthy Family of Rebirth in Xiangjiang" with more like-minded people, and pay attention to "excellent reading literature" on WeChat, talk about life, and find confidants~