"Soros announced the return of all funds from external investors and the conversion of the Quantum Fund into a family-owned fund."

Gao Dongfang said lightly, "In addition to these, Soros also announced his complete retirement, this old guy's health shouldn't be so bad, right?" ”

"I don't know."

Zhong Shi poured a cup of tea, tasted it carefully, and then said slowly, "He is also over seventy years old, and it should be time to be overwhelmed." ”

"I don't believe it!"

Regarding Zhong Shi's statement, Gao Dongfang just shook his head vigorously, "According to my understanding of him, I think this guy will never give up his career unless he is on the verge of death." This is a highly professional manager, and now the change must be due to something, you know? ”

"Why are you interested in this?"

Zhong Shi asked without answering, "Even if Soros retires, it is only a trivial matter for us, is there any important reason for this?" ”

"I heard he came to Hong Kong last week!"

Gao Dongfang stared at Zhong Shi's eyes and said slowly, "Someone saw him in the airport, and you." You should know that this guy has quite a lot of appeal in the market, although we don't think he has any kind of machinations to carry out. But if you can know why he came here, it won't be a bad thing. ”

"I suggested that he do it!"

At this point, it no longer makes much sense for Zhong Shi to continue to cover up, and he immediately admitted happily, "Because of certain things, he was punished, and in order to make up for his mistakes, he had to give up contact with outside investors, and personally announced his retirement." ”

"I think he'll make amends in the future, such as donating a lot of money to a school or a research institute, getting involved in politics, donating a lot of money to a certain party, and so on. I don't know exactly how, but I'm sure there will be such measures. Now you should understand, what happened to him, right? ”

"I kind of understand what's going on!"

Gao Dongfang nodded silently and didn't speak for a long time.

Historically, the relationship between politics and business has always been the first concern of businessmen, and even in the United States, which is a completely free market economy, it is necessary to have a good relationship with political groups, because it means that there are political forces to protect your interests. Of course, all this is based on the rule of law and compliance.

If the violation is intervened in the investigation, then the political forces will only disassociate themselves as soon as possible.

Obviously, Soros is not breaking the law and committing a crime, otherwise what awaits him now is trial. What he is doing now is clearly tinkering with public relations and re-establishing a good image. This shows that the problems that occur are only moral.

However, what Gao Dongfang was shocked in his heart was not the sudden announcement of Soros's retirement, but the role played by Zhong Shi in this matter, which he never expected. Although he knew very well that Zhong Shi was very open to the United States, he never thought that Zhong Shi could even influence the U.S. government now.

When I thought that when I first took office, I planned to have a good competition with the Tianyu Fund. But now, although Huatou has also made small achievements, it is not worth mentioning compared with the Tianyu Fund.

Sometimes, the gap between people and people is just so huge.

"Okay, I'm not looking for you today for this matter."

After thinking about it for a while, Gao Dongfang said, "Huatou is ready to expand its funds, because our investment return has exceeded expectations, so the senior management has decided to expand the scale of our capital management. However, this money is not intended to come out of the state treasury, and the investment area cannot be set in the country, so the top management decided to raise funds by issuing bonds, and the scale of overseas fundraising should not exceed 20 billion US dollars. ”

"You're going to let me buy some of it?"

The corners of Zhong Shi's mouth twitched slightly, and he said a little unhappily, "How many shares do you plan for me to buy?" Hey, you're really going to be able to get me in trouble. ”

Gao Dongfang, who had not appeared for a long time, suddenly came to the door, there must be something to discuss, and Zhong Shi knew this very well. But he never expected that Gao Dongfang would actually propose such a thing, which was really difficult for him to accept.

You must know that compared with Tianyu Fund, the rate of return of Huatou is too low. This kind of fundraising is a complete waste of funds for Zhong Shi, so he is quite unhappy.

"No, no, no!"

Gao Dongfang hurriedly denied it, "Zhong Sheng, you are wrong, I didn't intend to raise funds from you when I came to you, and I also know what the situation is." The reason I'm looking for you is to use your connections to see if the whole thing is viable. ”

In fact, Gao Dongfang did hit Zhongshi's idea, because Tianyu Fund could easily subscribe for the shares to be issued by Huatou. However, after this opinion was reported, it was decisively rejected by the top management. Because this kind of behavior is suspected of moral kidnapping, and the other point is that the return on investment of Huatou is indeed inferior to Tianyu Fund, which will only consume Zhong Shi's patriotic enthusiasm.

"Our initial idea is to issue $20 billion in bonds in London. Of course, both the pound and the euro are okay, and the currency aspect is basically negligible. But in the actual process, we found that the LIBOR of the market benchmark is a bit low, and it doesn't seem to be in line with the market's lending rate, so we want to borrow your relationship to see what is going on. ”

The so-called LIBOR, or the London Interbank Offered Rate, is the interest rate set by large international banks when they lend funds to their peers, and the target is the US dollar, but it does not involve US banks, because US banks follow the interest rate set by the Federal Reserve.

In simple terms, LIBOR starts out as the Eurodollar interest rate, which includes all interest rates for overnight, one week, two weeks, one month, two months to 12 months.

Later, as the mechanism developed, LIBOR included currencies such as the euro, the Japanese yen and the British pound, gradually forming a benchmark interest rate for these currencies on a European scale.

LIBOR is an important interest rate for bank lending, more precisely, LIBOR refers to the London Interbank Offered Rate, which refers to the interest rate on short-term funds lending between banks. As an important benchmark indicator of the financial market, it directly affects the pricing of financial products such as interest rate futures, interest rate swaps, industrial and commercial loans, personal loans and housing mortgages, as well as the formulation of monetary policy.

The current LIBOR pricing mechanism is based on 20 large banks submitting their borrowing rate estimates to the British Bankers Institute at 11 a.m. London time, which subtracts the arithmetic average of the highest and lowest interest rates accounting for 1/4 of the total number of quoting banks, which is the LIBOR rate for that day, and then this rate is applied to the pricing of various loans, derivatives and other financial instruments.

"Huh?"

As soon as he heard this, Zhong Shi's face suddenly changed, and he asked in a deep voice, "Are you sure there is a problem with this benchmark interest rate?" ”

He knows all too well the importance of this interest rate, knowing that a fluctuation of one basis point can mean hundreds of billions of profit changes. If there is a problem with this number, then the whole thing is very scary.

"I'm not sure either!"

Seeing Zhong Shi's serious appearance, Gao Dongfang felt a little weak, and after being silent for a moment, he said, "One of our underwriters, HSBC, gave us a quotation, which is not the same as the quotation given to us by another underwriter, Citigroup. After analyzing the two offers, we felt that there were some problems with them. The most important thing is that the two sides can't talk about this at all, so I'm going to ask you if you've heard of a similar problem in Europe. ”

"You're saying that there is a certain difference between the dollar quotes in Europe and the dollar quotes in the United States?"

Zhong Shi suddenly realized, "But isn't this a normal thing?" Are you sure they're making the same offer? Do you know that some quotations are different because of the different underwriting methods, and the interest rate quotations they give are also different? ”

Bond sales are generally divided into two types: underwriting and reimbursement. As the name suggests, underwriting is to shout in the market, while underwriting is to eat the part that is not sold in addition to the part that is sold. There are pros and cons to both options, depending on the strength of the underwriter and the popularity of the bond variety. Naturally, underwriters will choose different pricing strategies because of different methods.

"Of course I know that!"

Seeing that Zhong Shi hadn't heard what the situation was, Gao Dongfang couldn't help but be a little anxious, and couldn't help but strengthen his tone, "The way of underwriting is the same. But HSBC is telling us LIBOR, while Citi is telling us about the Fed's quotes. It is strange to us that the interest rate on a 10-year dollar loan is not the same thing, and there is a huge arbitrage space in this. ”

Although LIBOR and the Fed's benchmark interest rate are not the same thing, it is generally believed that the interest rate between LIBOR should be higher than the Fed's benchmark rate. Because the Fed's benchmark interest rate is the price at which banks lend to the Fed, and LIBOR is the price at which banks lend to each other.

But now that HSBC is quoting a price lower than the Fed's benchmark interest rate, there is a problem.

Strictly speaking, HSBC's offer is very attractive to Huatou, after all, if the interest rate is low, it will have to pay a little less money when the principal and interest are repaid in the future. But after studying the offers of HSBC and Citi, the top management of China Investment was unable to make up their minds, because they did not want their funds to become arbitrage capital between banks.

With a capital of $20 billion, even if there is a difference of one basis point, the arbitrage space can reach tens of millions of dollars, not to mention that this is a long-term loan with a tenor of up to 10 years.

At least in terms of issuance, Huatou does not intend to choose a side between European banks and American banks.

"And, most importantly, our commercial banks have currency swaps in Europe and the United States, and when it comes to interest rates, it's a big deal!"

Gao Dongfang went on to explain, "The current top management has a grand plan, that is, to go out of the operation of the renminbi and become one of the world's reserve currencies. If you don't know what's wrong with this, and you can't take the initiative in pricing power, then even if the renminbi can operate successfully, it will eventually become a tool that is just being played with. ”

"So this time, I didn't just come on behalf of Huatou, but on behalf of the capital and currency of the whole of China. In the future, if we issue more RMB products internationally, we need not only the initiative in the exchange rate, but also the initiative in the interest rate. Today's $20 billion is just a stepping stone. ”

"I see!"

Hearing this, Zhong Shi still didn't understand, and immediately nodded solemnly, "To what extent do we have to go in this matter to meet the requirements of the high-level?" ”

"Find out what the hell is going on!"

Gao Dongfang replied without hesitation, "Although we don't intend to interfere in their activities, we can't do their goals either. ”

"I see!"

Zhong Shi nodded solemnly.

Neither of them could have imagined that just a small detail of Huatou's bond sales would soon turn into a storm that swept the whole market, and many well-known big banks would be involved in this turmoil. (To be continued.) )