A huge Citigroup, it may not have come back to it until now. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

While they were happy to publish the share swap documents and enjoy the joy of the temporary rise in the stock, they were not aware of the impending crisis.

At the same time, when Citigroup's stock rose from its lowest point in late September to $29 in early October, Li Mubai instructed Amex traders to secretly absorb more than $1 billion in shares in batches from 3,600 accounts around the world.

At the same time, in the futures market, the big four technology companies are also constantly absorbing Citigroup shares.

Compared with Citigroup's market capitalization of more than $140 billion, this stock circulation of more than a billion dollars is only $2 billion, although it is still conspicuous in a single trading day, but it has not attracted anyone's attention.

Even Sandywell, the chairman of Citigroup, who received the company's daily stock market report, was not too surprised, "It seems that the impact of the Wall Street financial turmoil has affected our company, and many people in the market are now cautious about our future." ”

"Yes, sir! Although we have signed a share exchange agreement with Orange Technology, this agreement is primarily for the future, not the present. According to the analysis of the three major Wall Street appraisal firms, they are unanimously optimistic about our prospects for the future, but are pessimistic about the company's operations this year and next. One of the company's executive vice presidents nodded in agreement.

At the same time, he added, "However, according to our current subsidiary agreement with Orange Technology, we have the right to ask Orange Technology for help, and perhaps the large amount of cash flow in their hands will be the best way for us to tide over the crisis in the short term." This will effectively avoid the outflow of unfavorable news, and I believe that Orange Technology does not want us to fall into a crisis. ”

"You can give it a try." Sandwell pondered for a moment and nodded decisively.

"According to the agreement, we will pay Orange Technology an upfront 30% compensation of $2.1 billion this year, $3.5 billion in 2008 and $1.4 billion in 2009, but now in the company's account, a lot of the funds have been transferred to subsidiaries to participate in our acquisition plan; In addition, according to the Federal Savings Bank of New York, we provided a margin of up to $7.5 billion and borrowed $4.5 billion from Wall Street, so that the company's cash flow will be at a low point for a short period of time; If we can borrow back this part of the payment funds for the time being, it will effectively alleviate our current pressure. The vice president of the company touched his head, a little tired.

You know, these days, he's almost driven crazy by the company's finances.

As a giant in the world's private commercial banks, Citigroup has had total assets of more than $700 billion for a long time, but at present, due to the impact of the Wall Street financial turmoil, investment in many key areas has fallen to varying degrees.

In particular, the pressure on the group in the financial services financing sector is the greatest, according to the top secret data of the group's internal statistics, in the past golden decade of the federal economy (1998-2007), Citigroup has provided about 85 billion US dollars of loans and more than 40 billion US dollars of financing to the financial financing service industry; At the time, no one could have imagined what to do if something went wrong.

After all, the entire federal financial industry was thriving at that time, and this profiteering industry in turn prompted Citigroup to acquire more marketable bonds, and by this time, the total amount of funds in the financial quagmire of the entire group had exceeded 1,500 dollars.

However, Sandywell could not have imagined at this time that it was because of this non-performing loan and junk bond that a few years later, it would drag down a huge Citigroup to the point where its market value plummeted by tens of thousands of percent, and at the most dangerous time, Citi's stock price fell from its historical peak of more than $50 a share to $0.48 per share, of which the difference was as high as 100 times.

Even so, the Wall Street financial turmoil still had a huge negative impact on Citigroup, and its stock price finally fell below the $30 investor psychological expectation mark on October 3.

Everyone was waiting for Citigroup's third-quarter earnings report in early October, and now Citigroup's senior management is busy with this as the company enters a critical inflection point.

"I will try my best to communicate with Orange Technology, and the company must also be prepared, at a critical time, we must get the support of the Federal Reserve, otherwise once Citigroup has operational problems, then the Wall Street incident will be staged in the entire U.S. banking industry, which will be a disaster for the entire federal government." Sandywell said distressedly.

He once thought that as long as he solved the problem of cooperation with Orange Technology, the difficulties encountered by Citi would be solved, but after reaching an agreement with Orange Technology, he found that this was just a prelude to the storm, and the cooperation with Orange Technology was just a tent that could shelter from the wind and rain.

The non-performing loans are a 12-level typhoon that swooped down on Citigroup! In the past, Citi was able to quickly gain the favor of investors, and when the time came for other federal banks to crisis, Citi would be able to take advantage of the opportunity to absorb the funds of countless panicked investors to expand its operations.

If you can't get past it, I'm afraid that the fate of Citi and the fate of Bell Investment Bank are not far behind.

At the same time, on the top floor of the Morgan Building, an operation against Citigroup was also being held in secret.

For a long time, John Morgan, the spokesperson of the Morgan Group, did not show much interest in the internal affairs of the Morgan consortium, and he has always only used the foundation to regulate the development trajectory of some consortiums behind the scenes, without expressing his views on specific affairs.

But in recent years, especially after the outbreak of the Wall Street financial crisis, John Jr. clearly sensed a golden opportunity in the air of unease, that is, Citigroup, which has made a mistake in management, and their excessive pursuit of profits and ignorance of risk investment behavior has brought terrible consequences to itself.

"You know, in 2000, I was ambitious, thinking that within a year, for JPMorgan Chase, I acquired 16 financial banks with a certain strength, when our total assets finally exceeded 600 billion US dollars, but in the financial report released that year, we could only rank third, I was thinking, is Citigroup going to be suppressed on our heads?"

John Jr. was actually very old, but according to their family lineage, there were many people named John, so even though he was approaching his seventies, he was still called John Jr.

Once you reach a certain age, you can't help but be reminisced, "I don't think so, so I've been trying to rebuild JPMorgan Chase Bank into the world's number one commercial bank." After that, in 2004, I finally made a seemingly successful breakthrough, and I was very happy at the time, but the reality gave me a black humor. ”

The participants here are all chairmen of various groups under the Morgan consortium and managers of various foundations, and they are all high-level executives who have experienced the struggle of the federal consortium over the years, and of course they understand the inside story of what John Jr. said.

In 2004, JPMorgan Chase finally moved the federal government, and under pressure from a large number of consortiums such as Rockefeller, it successfully forced the Federal Reserve to approve JPMorgan Chase's application to acquire First Bank of Chicago.

After the acquisition, JPMorgan Chase and First Bank of Chicago completed the merger, and the new JPMorgan Chase had total assets of up to $1.12 trillion after the merger, finally surpassing the second-ranked Bank of America at the time, but what followed has made many people haunt it to this day, because Rockefeller saw that Morgan's acquisition of the Bank of Chicago was a foregone conclusion.

So taking advantage of this opportunity, it also acquired the regional commercial bank that ranked seventh in the United States at that time, and merged it into Citigroup First Group, which was controlled by the Rockefeller consortium, so that Citigroup also continued to maintain its first place with total assets of 1.19 trillion US dollars.

Although it seems that the gap between the two sides is only $70 billion in total assets, for investor psychology, the gap between the first and second is by no means something that can be erased by $70 billion in assets.

So over the years, Citigroup has been able to earn more than $50 billion in net profits a year by virtue of its industry leader, while JPMorgan Chase can only bring more than $30 billion in total revenue to the consortium.

If it weren't for JPMorgan Chase's investment management company, which provides a lot of investment returns every year, I am afraid that the conflict between the two groups would have erupted long ago due to the competition for customers.

"Sir, this has always been what I want to say, although we have developed relatively slowly in the past three years, but we have laid a solid foundation step by step, compared with the huge amount of non-performing loans and junk bonds in Citi's hands of more than 100 billion US dollars, we now have more than 30 billion US dollars of junk bonds and non-performing loans in the whole group; These are the things you bring to us. "Jamie Dimon was previously the CEO of First Bank of Chicago.

Of course, he knew what the situation was at that time, when the federal economy seemed to be very developed, especially the financial industry was highly prosperous, and in 2003, the First Bank of Chicago lent more than $20 billion to financial-related industries.

It also has more than $15 billion in junk bonds and bond issuers' financing.

After the merger, JPMorgan Chase planned to clean up this part of the unstable assets, which led to the subsequent competition, JPMorgan Chase Bank was gradually surpassed by Citigroup in this field, and the recent financing of more than $1 billion was snatched away by Citigroup.

At the time, it seemed that JPMorgan Chase's strength was not enough, but now it seems that it was a far-sighted decision made by the top management of the consortium.

"Actually, I now think of a sentence that the rope that hangs the capitalists is sold by ourselves." With a lighthearted smile on his face, John Jr. said slowly, "On the day Junk Bonds appeared, I always thought that this was a project that contained countless opportunities and enough to bury us. It's ridiculous that some old friends often joke about my timidity, and they have made billions of dollars worth of money through junk bonds, but they ignore the risks behind it. ”

"I think they're not ignoring, they're being too smart, they think that if they're not the last to take over, they're not going to be buried with risk. These days, I keep getting news that more than half of your friends are bankrupt, and a small part of them are struggling now, and some people even come to our company in the hope that we can take over their bonds at a tenth of the price in the past, but only God knows, why should I spend money to buy this worthless garbage?! Jamie Dimon cooperated with a message that made everyone present feel regent.

Not so long ago, many of them were dissatisfied with the company's conservative policies, and now it seems that if they do the business according to their ideas, the company is at risk of going out of business.

"Okay, these compliments, keep them and engrave them on my tombstone later." Little John made a joke, and then suppressed the voices of the others, "Now is the time for the final general attack on Citigroup, because they have found a mountain of gold, they can escape the current risk, it's ridiculous!" ”

"Yes, they have been hoping for a partnership with Orange Technology for some time, but they have ignored the speed of the depreciation of junk bonds and the confidence of investors across the United States. But they're not too stupid, at least now they've started to organize and premeditate the transfer of junk bonds and bad loans that could bankrupt them. Jamie Dimon said with a smile, "But it's too late, I'm thinking, once Citigroup goes bankrupt, many of their high-quality industries can complement us, and this will be a great opportunity for the whole Morgan to expand again." ”

"Of course! That's the purpose of my coming here today, and I hope that all the subsidiaries of the entire consortium can work together at this time to clean up the junk bonds and non-performing loans that can threaten us as soon as possible, and transfer those that cannot be cleaned up, and never let them fall into our hands. Little John saw that everyone's minds were hooked, so he directly commanded, "Citigroup's problems are by no means only those that we are facing now, their seemingly strong fortresses have been opened up by junk bonds and non-performing loans, all the problems will erupt in a short period of time, and what we have to do is to push hard in the back." ”

"I have gathered a group of secret traders and prepared everything needed, just waiting for your orders, we can immediately stop Citi from saving itself in the stock market and futures market." Jamie Dimon's face was filled with unprecedented satisfaction, because once Citigroup is gone, JPMorgan Chase will become the world's largest private commercial bank!