Chapter 240: Wedding Expenses and Bond Issuance
Li Xuan half-opened his eyes and reached out to his side, but he didn't touch the soft and fiery delicate body. He heard the sound of draining water in the bathroom, only to find that his wife Zhong Chuhong had already gotten up to take a bath.
Last night he was drowsy, and after returning to the wedding room, he slept until dawn, and the good wedding night was wasted. Li Xuan lay on the bed for a while, the clothes he was wearing had been changed into silky silk pajamas, but he could still smell the strong smell of wine on his body. He didn't feel comfortable smelling it himself, so he simply stopped lazy and got up and went to the bathroom to wash.
"Ah, what are you doing, don't make it bad!" Zhong Chuhong's coquettish voice soon came from the bathroom.
"I snubbed you last night, now I will compensate you for my husband!" Li Xuan said with a slight smile.
The two frolicked in the bathroom for half an hour and took a mandarin duck bath before drying themselves out. Zhong Chuhong walked out of the bathroom wrapped in a pink bath towel, her pretty face was slightly red, and her beautiful eyes still had a bit of confusion after orgasm.
Li Xuan also came out quickly and saw his wife blowing her hair with her back to her. He walked behind Zhong Chuhong, looked at the delicate and white fragrant shoulders and the jade arms as smooth as snow, and couldn't help but feel a little nervous, reaching out to hug his wife from behind.
"Don't make any more trouble, there are a lot of things going on today! Your clothes have been put on the bed for you, obedient!" Zhong Chuhong pressed the hand that wanted to untie his bath towel, and said softly like a child.
The two are indeed busy today, although the wedding is over, there is still a lot of finishing work. Some VIPs will leave Hong Kong today, and Li Xuan and his wife must see them off. Many company employees, family and friends who had a busy day for yesterday's wedding, the two couples have to go and say thank you. The couple's newlywed honeymoon trip. It also had to be postponed until three days later, waiting for the end of the day to come to an end before it began.
The major newspapers in Hong Kong today. Naturally, it was slaughtered by yesterday's wedding of the century. Many newspapers have almost turned today's newspaper into a special issue for the Li family's wedding banquet. From the guests present. The wedding process, the banquet dishes, and the super fireworks show over Victoria Harbour were all reported in detail.
Even Prince Charles and his wife attended a number of events yesterday morning, and this kind of hot news, which should have been highlighted, was squeezed into an unimportant page. There are even several newspapers that made a detailed comparison between Li Xuan's wedding and Huo Zhenting's wedding a few years ago, and the wedding banquet last night won in all aspects.
The reporters made a rough count of the cost of this wedding banquet. The banquet is 2,888 yuan per table. A total of 380 tables. Coupled with the selection of Rémy Martin as the wedding banquet wine, the cost of the banquet alone is as high as 1.5 million Hong Kong dollars. The wedding dress that the bride wore last night cost as much as 300,000 US dollars, and counting the other dozen sets of dresses of the two newlyweds, as well as the necklace and jewelry worn by the bride, the cost of this piece is as much as 3 million.
And last night, the fireworks display over Victoria Harbour lasted for an hour and cost 2 million Hong Kong dollars. Yesterday, the police department carried out an almost full mobilization in order to ensure the smooth progress of the Li family's wedding. Li Xuan naturally did not want to bear the notoriety of wasting public finances because of private matters. Donated HK$1 million to the Hong Kong Police Force as compensation.
Counting various other expenses such as renting hotel rooms, wedding flowers, and private security, the total cost of Li Xuan's wedding may exceed 10 million Hong Kong dollars. Although the Hong Kong dollar has depreciated slightly, the exchange rate against the US dollar has not yet broken 6.
A wedding that cost nearly $2 million is absolutely luxurious even in the world. This is the dollar of 1982. The purchasing power is much stronger than the dollar thirty years later.
At noon, Li Xuan and his wife specially invited the Bush family to lunch and thanked Mr. and Mrs. Vice President for taking the time. Transferred to Hong Kong to attend the wedding. Although Li Xuan did not know whether Bush Sr. had any secret arrangements in the past two days. But on the surface, he must admit the other party's affection. In the afternoon, the vice president and his wife will return to the United States on the "Air Force 2" and the Bush Jr. and his wife and Marvin Bush, who will be Li Xuan's best man. I also left on my father's plane.
And another distinguished guest, who gave people a bit of a headache, obviously had no plans to leave. Yesterday, the focus of the whole Hong Kong was on Li Xuan's wedding, and today the attention of all the media immediately shifted, and the personable British prince and the noble and elegant princess became the new hot spot of everyone's coverage.
In the afternoon, the groundbreaking ceremony of the City Polytechnic of Hong Kong was cut by the crown prince and his wife, and Li Xuan, as the chairman of the preparatory committee of the City Polytechnic, naturally also needed to attend.
At the media conference, Li Xuan was reluctant to answer questions that were not related to the preparation of the college, but the crown prince and his wife were very willing to communicate with the media in Hong Kong and answered almost all kinds of questions. Li Xuan is also happy to see that the reporters are focusing their firepower on Charles and his wife, anyway, it is not him who needs a headache.
At the same time, in the office of Guoxin's Hong Kong branch in Central, Long Yiren was reading a newspaper. The front page of the "Ta Kung Pao" he was holding in his hand was also occupied by yesterday's wedding banquet. Although Ta Kung Pao is a leftist newspaper that accepts the leadership of the party, in Hong Kong's competitive commercial society, while actively promoting policies for the mainland, it also has to consider its own sales and publish some hot content that readers like to see.
Of course, even if it is also covering the wedding of the Li family's century, the perspective of leftist newspapers such as Ta Kung Pao is still different from that of newspapers such as Ming Pao and Sing Tao Daily. For example, the news of "Ta Kung Pao" mentioned the congratulatory gift entrusted by the central leadership to Long Yiren. A pair of very exquisite "good couples are natural" four characters inscribed and framed by the central leaders themselves. Li Xuan is naturally a person who knows the goods, and the congratulatory gift inscribed by the second-generation leader himself is a very high political honor, and not everyone can enjoy it.
Long Yiren heard footsteps, looked up and saw that it was Zhao Shuhua, the general manager of the Hong Kong branch, walking in.
"This 'God of Wealth Li' is indeed as his name suggests, and a wedding cost 10 million Hong Kong dollars, which is really not bad money!" Long Yiren patted the newspaper on his hand and smiled.
"Dongfang Electronics Company is the most profitable company in Hong Kong, and its cash flow is very abundant! Last month, news broke in Hong Kong that Li Xianhui used 1 billion Hong Kong dollars in cash to take over 9.5% of the shares sold by a major shareholder of Standard Chartered Bank, becoming the largest individual shareholder of Standard Chartered!"
Zhao Shuhua continued, "And Li Sheng has also been officially appointed as a director of Standard Chartered Bank and vice chairman of Standard Chartered Hong Kong not long ago. In addition, Li Sheng's Jiahua Bank has also received sufficient capital injection in the past year, and has developed rapidly in the past year. The number of branches has increased from 29 to 37, making it the largest medium-sized bank in Hong Kong!"
"The other guest I attended with on the show "Qiang Qiang Threesome" was Yang Lingjun, the president of Jiahua Bank?" asked Long Yiren, who was going to ATV in the afternoon to participate in the recording.
Zhao Shuhua nodded and said: "The original management of Jiahua Bank had a history of forcing the Lin family, the previous major shareholder, so it was not subject to Li Sheng's current position. After Li Sheng stabilized the situation, he gradually began to change the management of Jiahua Bank. This Yang Lingjun previously served as a vice president of Hang Seng Bank, and was poached by Li Sheng to take the helm of Jiahua Bank!"
"How did you negotiate with Jiahua Bank before?" asked Long Yiren again.
Guosen wants to issue a HK$100 million bond in Hong Kong, and the Hong Kong branch is negotiating with relevant institutions. Jiahua Bank has been gaining momentum in recent times, and after Li Xuan's large injection of funds and continuous contraction of credit to the real estate industry, the funds in hand are very abundant. Hong Kong's bond market has always been OTC (over-the-counter) trading, with investors mainly banks and funds.
"Jiahua Bank is willing to accept private placement bonds, but not local currency bonds, but wants to issue negotiable US dollar bonds!" Zhao said.
Long Yiren frowned, the news reported by Zhao Shuhua was a little surprising to him. The reluctance of Jiahua Bank to accept Hong Kong dollar bonds shows that the other party is very optimistic about the future exchange rate of Hong Kong dollars. However, Jiahua Bank's willingness to accept private placement bonds is good news, as private placements are less demanding than public offerings.
Commercial rating agencies such as Moody's and Standard & Poor's have little understanding of China, which has just implemented reform and opening up, which will bring a lot of trouble to the rating.
For example, last year, Guoxin issued 10 billion yen of samurai bonds in Japan for the Suhuai Provincial Yi-Zheng Chemical Fiber Project, which encountered great trouble in the rating, consumed a lot of time, and added a lot of unnecessary additional financing costs. The private placement process is simpler, as it only requires mutual agreement between the issuer and the assignee.
"Jiahua Bank is the least stringent among many interested investment institutions!" Zhao Shuhua said again.
"You continue to negotiate, and when I meet with President Yang today, I will make an appointment with him to communicate together!"
In a few months, after China and Britain begin negotiations on the Hong Kong issue, Hong Kong's property market, stock market, and exchange rate will plummet. Now the exchange rate of the US dollar against the Hong Kong dollar is around 1 to 5.9, but at the most turbulent moment during the Sino-British negotiations, the exchange rate once fell to 9.6. However, in the following decades, the US dollar remained around 1 to 7.8 against the Hong Kong dollar.
Since Li Xuan knew that the Hong Kong dollar would soon depreciate, all the companies under his name had consciously converted Hong Kong dollar deposits into US dollars since last year. To this end, a number of economists from the Oriental Economic Research Institute conducted a detailed analysis of the future exchange rate of the Hong Kong dollar and came to a series of conclusions that met Li Xuan's appetite.
The sharp fluctuations in the exchange rate have hit the banking sector the hardest, and Jiahua Bank has been quietly reducing its Hong Kong dollar cash assets into foreign currency and gold. At this time, the purchase of Hong Kong dollar bonds, when the bonds mature, the loss caused by the depreciation of the Hong Kong dollar will almost wipe out all the profits, so Jiahua Bank is more willing to accept foreign currency bonds. (To be continued......)