27 Wellington Street, Central, Headquarters of the Hong Kong Economic Times.

"You took this picture?"

President and editor-in-chief Mai Huazhang stared at the dozen or so photos spread out on the table in front of him, and quickly raised his head and asked the two young men in front of him with "Hong Kong Economic Times" reporter signs.

One of them, a slightly tall and fat young man with eyes, sniffed and smiled proudly: "Boss, isn't this the news that Big B and I are tracking the billions of foreign exchange of the Kowloon Bank recently?" I didn't expect to have a windfall! ”

Another young man who was a little thinner than him kept rolling his eyes, looking very clever, and he echoed when he heard this: "Brother Fei and I think there may be big news here, what do you think, do you want us to continue to follow up?" ”

Mak Wah Cheung took a deep breath and looked at the dozen or so photos spread out on the table, six or seven of which were in front of the same star-rated hotel, one of which was a man in a suit who looked less than forty years old shaking hands with another middle-aged man who showed the temperament of a successful person; Another scene shows the man in a suit, who is less than forty years old, and another tall, thin white man who is older walking into the hotel laughing.

Most of the remaining photos show three different luxury cars, but they are parked together. Only one photograph is blurry of the three people standing together in the previous photo, but it is very blurry because of the darkness of the night and the distance of the person taking the photograph.

The reason why I can't help but be excited is because the three people in the photo, Mak Huazhang, all know each other, among them, the man in a suit who appears most often under the age of 40 is Song Nianhui, the president of the Kowloon Bank, who has been very famous in Hong Kong's financial and investment circles in recent years, and the other two are Wu Guangzheng, one of the top ten Chinese richest people in Hong Kong today, and the youngest and tallest white man is named Su Haiwen, who is the chairman of the world's shipping giant, the Global Shipping Group.

It is very abnormal for the latter two to appear together, because although Wu Guangzheng and Su Haiwen are both the sons-in-law of Bao Yugang, the Chinese ship king who has just passed away. But a few years ago, in order to compete for the 100 billion family property left by Bao Yugang, several of his sons-in-law almost went to court.

In the end, although Wu Guangzheng and Su Haiwen competed for the two largest family properties as they wished, but the former lost his status as the king of the ship, and the latter lost the tens of billions of real estate that Bao Yugang bought in Hong Kong, so the two were brothers-in-law, but after Bao Yugang's death, the relationship has been extremely cold, and in the past few years, except for a few charity parties and government cocktail parties, they have hardly appeared together.

Wu Guangzheng has a very poor relationship with Su Haiwen, which is not a secret in Hong Kong, and Mai Huazhang naturally knows it, so it is impossible for the two to come together without external reasons.

There is no doubt that Song Nianhui, president of the Bank of Kowloon, is the external factor that can make two people with a very poor relationship sit together!

"Behind Song Nianhui's Kowloon Bank is the Lin Xiaozhi family, Wu Guangzheng and Su Haiwen are also the top wealthy families in Hong Kong, so these three families can come together, obviously there must be an inside story behind it!"

Mai Huazhang's head turned quickly, don't look at him, he is only forty years old this year, but he has been in the industry for a long time.

After graduating from the University of Hong Kong with a major in European literature in 73, he was hired to join Wen Wei Po as a reporter, because of his excellent foreign language and understanding of Europe, after the European edition of Wen Wei Po was launched in 81, he was transferred to Europe and first served as editor-in-chief, and within a few years he was promoted to deputy editor-in-chief, and when he was transferred back to Hong Kong in 85, he was already the deputy general manager of Wen Wei Po. In the stock market crash in 87, "Wen Wei Po" suffered a heavy blow, at that time, he already had his own entrepreneurial idea, at the invitation of his classmate Feng Shaobo and friend Shi Jingquan, he readily agreed to cooperate to establish a new newspaper, that is, "Hong Kong Economic Times", not only owned the shares, but also took over the responsibility of the newspaper's president and editor-in-chief.

It is no exaggeration to say that without his efforts in the past few years, the "Hong Kong Economic Daily" would not have gone from an obscure financial newspaper to now inseparable from the old "Hong Kong Economic Journal", and its market share in the Hong Kong financial newspapers and periodicals with the most iron-clad readers has exceeded 20%.

The more I thought about it, the more I felt that there was something strange in it, and Mai Huazhang immediately made a decision, "Da Fei, Ah B, you two are the most clever." Since you discovered this news first, if you continue to follow it, there will probably be big news immediately! ”

After a pause, he immediately continued: "I'll write a comment later, and the five thousand yuan that you two will go to the accounting will be used as activity funds for you to use, if you really hit a big news, I'll give each of you a big red envelope!" ”

Media reporters also earn high and low, and front-line reporters like them who need to run around looking for news almost all rely on finding red envelopes from the big news Times to make money. If you can't find the news, it will only be a few thousand yuan a month, so when you hear that the editor-in-chief directly allocated 5,000 activity funds for your own use, the eyes of the two were full of joy, and they hurriedly patted their chests to assure that they would continue to keep an eye on it.

Not to mention, as soon as the reporter of the "Hong Kong Economic Times" watched carefully, he felt more and more that there must be something strange between the Kowloon Bank and the old ship king family.

As more and more information was gathered into the hands of Mr. McWarh-cheung, who had sorted out the seemingly messy information, Mr. McWar-cheung quickly came up with an answer that was exciting to the Hong Kong Economic Times: Kowloon Bank was probably negotiating with the old ship king family to buy its stake in Standard Chartered Bank.

This conclusion is not a matter of speculation, and there is a lot of evidence cited by McWarzer.

Since the release of the previous year's annual revenue report in January this year, Standard Chartered's shares listed on the London Stock Exchange, which had not performed well, have experienced only a brief decline, and then the share price has gradually tended to rise steadily, which is easy to ignore if you are not careful. If McWarzen hadn't patiently turned over the past few months' Standard Chartered stock trading data and then looked back and compared, I am afraid that he would have ignored that the stock price of Standard Chartered has risen steadily by 30% compared to the lowest in November last year.

For listed banks such as Standard Chartered, which did not perform well in the UK last year, it is not normal for the stock price to rise by more than 30% in just a few months. Then there is only one explanation, the number of outstanding shares in the market is decreasing, and there are funds secretly and continuously absorbing Standard Chartered shares, which slowly raises its stock price.

And among the industries under the name of the old ship king family, there are really not many that can arouse Lin Xiaozhi's interest. Lin Xiaozhi will definitely not get involved easily, let alone real estate, since his debut, he has expressed his dislike for the real estate industry in the media more than once, and the Lin family has not invested in this area since he became the owner. Wu Guangzheng has a Wharf TV station under his name, which may arouse Lin Xiaozhi's interest, but not to mention that it is a limited TV station for a fee, just because he already has ATV, a free TV station that has risen fiercely in recent years, it is absolutely impossible to play the idea of Wharf TV, and the Hong Kong government alone will not be able to pass the level, and it is impossible to approve it at all.

So if there is anything in the hands of the old ship king family that can provoke Lin Xiaozhi, a cutting-edge super-rich man who has been in the limelight in Hong Kong in recent years, in addition to the shares of Standard Chartered Bank that are now scattered by Su Haiwen and Wu Guangzheng, Mak Huazhang really can't guess anything else.

Kowloon Bank wants to eat Standard Chartered, which is simply normal.

Standard Chartered is no better than the giant HSBC, which ranks among the world's top 500 companies (HSBC had a turnover of 266 in '92. $3.5 billion, profit 17. US$832.5 billion), and its total market capitalization is only 43.4 billion pounds (about 50 billion Hong Kong dollars). Although the Bank of Kowloon is inferior to it, the Hong Kong media Financial Weekly has assessed its market value as only more than 13 billion Hong Kong dollars, but it can't help but stand behind the Bank of Kowloon Lin Xiaozhi family, one of the richest top wealthy families in Hong Kong today, it is not impossible to swallow Standard Chartered!

The benefits of swallowing Standard Chartered Bank are obvious, with 377 outlets around the world and nearly HK$230 billion in customer deposits in Hong Kong alone, making it one of the largest banks in Hong Kong. At the same time, Standard Chartered is also one of the only two government-designated Hong Kong dollar issuing banks, although compared with HSBC, the Hong Kong dollar issued by Standard Chartered only accounts for less than 13% of the currency in circulation, but it is also a big fat piece that everyone is looking at.

As early as the mid-80s, the "Lloyds Bank", known as the British capital hooligan, tried to make a hostile takeover of Standard Chartered, because after Hong Kong's return to the motherland, if Standard Chartered Bank could continue to hold the qualification to issue notes, its asset value would surely double and skyrocket. In the past Sino-British negotiations, London and Beijing have disputed the issue of the qualifications for issuing banknotes in the future on the issue of the issue of the Hong Kong dollar, and I don't know how many times, although Britain has forced the mainland to reluctantly agree to retain the qualification of 'HSBC' to issue banknotes for a period of time in the future with good cards such as investing in China and exporting precision machinery and advanced military technology urgently needed by the mainland, Beijing has taken a very tough attitude on the issue of whether or not it needs to urgently issue the banknotes to Standard Chartered Bank.

The British will certainly not give up Standard Chartered easily, and this country, which still barely retains the world's fourth-largest economy and the world's third-largest military power, has a good card in its hand. Therefore, it is not difficult for London to maintain the qualification of Standard Chartered Bank to issue banknotes, but if the Lin family, who is quite pro-communist, takes the opportunity to become the owner of Standard Chartered, I am afraid it will become the only change in it.

More and more information shows that Lin Xiaozhi really has the idea of Standard Beating, Mak Huazhang is not in a hurry to break the news, "Hong Kong Economic Times" is different from general entertainment media, as a professional financial newspaper based on the middle and high-class class, they need more accurate data.

Soon, as they dug more, they finally got their hands on a crucial piece of evidence.

On May 17, Australian hotel giant Robert Hum suddenly announced that he would order a private jet from Bombardier Canada...... I didn't use the hotel funds, in fact, not long ago, a Hong Kong bank bought my entire stake in Standard Chartered."

Although Robert Hum did not name who the other party was, the "Hong Kong Economic Times" that has been keeping an eye on the Kowloon Bank and the Lin family knows that just a week ago, the president of the Kowloon Bank went to Australia on a private vacation, and stayed in Singapore for two days on the way, and was even photographed by the local media that he had visited Khoo Teck Puat, the richest man in Singapore, and he is now the largest private shareholder of Standard Chartered Bank!

Combined with Song Nianhui's frequent meetings with the old ship king family in Hong Kong, Mak Huazhang finally affirmed Lin Xiaozhi's covetousness of Standard Chartered Bank, so in Hong Kong, which had just entered late May, the "Hong Kong Economic Times" released an article that made the whole Hong Kong boil - "Who will be the next white knight?" Standard Chartered may change hands soon! ”