Chapter 8: The Cover is Still a Catalyst

In fact, the phone call was only five or six minutes long, but in Fernand's feelings, it seemed as long as half a xiǎo hour. When Fang Mingyuan walked out of the house with an apologetic face, Fernan and Agasha got up to say goodbye.

Looking at the back of Fernand hurriedly entering the car, Chen Zhong, who followed together, said a little strangely: "Why do I think this Mr. Jacobs is in a hurry?" Fang Mingyuan laughed twice, but did not answer.

In fact, Fernand weishenme would be like this, Fang Mingyuan's heart knew very well that Fernand was míhuò by one of his xiǎohuā moves.

In fact, the call was arranged by Fang Mingyuan before meeting Fernand, and the Hong Kong side would call in at this time, and then Fang Mingyuan would chat casually with the other party in English for a few minutes, and would deliberately repeat it loudly several times from Bethlehem Steel Company.

Fang Mingyuan didn't expect such a trick to really make any difference, with Fernand's ability, maybe he could soon find out that so far, the Fang family has not had any formal contact with the Bethlehem Iron and Steel Company. But perhaps Fernand will never be sure whether Bethlehem Steel has some connection to the Fang family. Anyway, no matter whether Fernand can be sure of this matter or not, it will give him a sense of oppression, making him understand that the initiative in this matter is now in the hands of the Fang family!

Of course, the contact with Bethlehem Steel is not entirely fake. Because in Fang Mingyuan's memory, Bethlehem Steel Company, a behemoth with a history of more than 100 years and once the second largest steel company in the United States, will face the fate of being acquired in the near future. He couldn't remember exactly what year it was, but it should have been the end of the century and the beginning of the century. Prior to this, in order to avoid bankruptcy, the board of directors of Bethlehem Steel Company sold many of the company's assets to the public. This includes steel mills, rolling mills and even a stake in Allied Mining.

Many people may be unfamiliar with the Brazilian United Mining Company, headquartered in Bello, the capital of the Brazilian state of Minas. It is a mining company integrating mining, mineral mining, commercial trade and logistics, and its main business is iron ore exploration and trade. Union Mining Corporation of Brazil has its own mines in Brazil. It is the second-largest mining company in Brazil and the fourth-largest mining company in Shijie, after Vale, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton in iron ore sales.

In the next century, 30 percent of the annual production of the Brazilian United Mining Company was supplied to Huaxia's steel company.

So for Fang Mingyuan, the shares of Brazil United Mining are more important than the steel mill! If these shares can be acquired from Bethlehem Steel in time, then Brazil's United Mining will have its own say in the future. After a breakthrough, Fang Mingyuan is confident that he will take advantage of several international economic movements in the future to occupy more shares in Brazil's United Mining step by step! This is undoubtedly of great significance to Huaxia, which needs to import a large amount of iron ore from Brazil in the future.

Therefore, when Fang Mingyuan decided to set foot in the Huaxia steel industry, he had been closely following the current situation of Bethlehem Iron and Steel Company. Although it is extremely unrealistic to say that a full takeover of Bethlehem Steel Company is historically unrealistic, in the United States, unionized steel industry workers are paid 30 to 40 percent more than other manufacturing workers in the United States, including benefits and insurance. This problem has not only caused the excessively high labor costs of the US steel industry and greatly weakened the competitiveness of the US steel industry, but also caused the strong resistance faced by the US steel industry when it was restructured -- the US steel workers, who are accustomed to high wages, look down on jobs in other industries!

In fact, since the 70s, the U.S. government has implemented a series of protective measures for imported steel in order to support its steel industry. However, despite the support of the U.S. government, the U.S. steel industry has been in decline since the 80s due to high production and labor costs and low productivity. U.S. steel companies have actually lost their competitiveness, but due to the special position of the U.S. economy in the global economy, the U.S. steel industry still has a position that cannot be ignored in the Shijie steel industry.

There was once a steel giant who took a fancy to the Bethlehem Iron and Steel Company on the verge of bō and wanted to swallow the Bethlehem Iron and Steel Company completely, but in the end he had to give up helplessly, one of the big reasons was that the Bethlehem Iron and Steel Company at that time had more than 20,000 employees, but the number of pensions in the company was as high as 310,000.

Of course, Fang Mingyuan would not think that he would be able to do something that would be difficult for the Shijie steel giants to retreat, but it was not difficult to reap some benefits from the decline of Bethlehem Iron and Steel Company. It's just that when Bethlehem Steel Company was at its most difficult, there were still a few years before now, and it was far from quenching its thirst, and now it could only be used as a cover to scare Fernand.

It was said that it was to scare Fernand, but Fernand, who was sitting in the car, did not think so. For the general situation of Shijie steel industry today, Fernand naturally understands better than Fang Mingyuan.

The oil crisis that began in the mid-70s has led many industries in developed countries to focus on reducing the energy consumption and cost of their products.

The industrial maturity of developed countries has transformed the market demand for steel products into quality demand and low price competition, which has caused the total annual output of shijie crude steel to stagnate since the mid-seventies, and the output of developed countries has been decreasing, while the output of developing countries is constantly increasing rapidly, and the pressure to reduce costs has prompted the giants of the shijie steel industry to have to adjust their own structure.

On the one hand, it is constantly transferring backward production capacity to developing countries, or letting it withdraw from the stage of history; On the other hand, it is also actively preparing for restructuring and mergers and acquisitions. This is true in Europe, it is true in the United States, and it is also true in Japan.

Therefore, for Fang Mingyuan's gun, Fernand's attention is actually far beyond Fang Mingyuan's original plan, precisely because Fernand knows that Bethlehem Iron and Steel Company now does have the possibility of selling and transferring its steel mills!

As a result, the situation quickly developed at a speed beyond Fang Mingyuan's imagination!