In Tangshan, there is a three-story Western-style office building covering an area of about 600 square meters, which is the headquarters of the largest enterprise in contemporary China.

A series of important institutions of Fuyuan Machinery Factory are set up here, including the office of the chairman of the board of directors, the office of the general manager, the finance department, the sales department and a series of administrative institutions.

The large meeting room on the third floor is typical of Italy, with large oil paintings by unknown Italian painters hanging on the walls, large glass windows with double curtains, the afternoon sun falling on the carpet through the gaps in the curtains, and a huge rectangular table in the middle of which is a crystal lamp imported from Italy.

However, at this time, the tranquility of the conference room was broken, as the door of the conference room was opened, and then several men in Western-style formal clothes walked in, they were holding teacups or various texts, etc., quickly set up in this conference room, and after they left, many people walked into the conference room again.

Some of the people who came were wearing Western-style tuxedos, some were wearing horse coats and robes, some were elderly people with long beards, some were middle-aged men with beards and about forty, and there were three blond foreigners.

When they walked in, they sat down!

After these people came in, Zhao Chenbin, who was sitting at the top of the board, was the first to speak: "You are all busy people, and it is not easy to get everyone together for this meeting today, but the board of directors has been extremely disappointed in our work recently. ”

Hearing Zhao Chenbin's words, the heads of the various departments of the Fuyuan Machinery Factory all changed their faces, and the board of directors was still not satisfied with their work? How greedy people have to be to be dissatisfied with the profitability of the current Fuyuan Machinery Factory.

As a typical heavy industry complex with the theme of national defense work, the main business of the arms manufacturing industry and the steel industry in the past two years can be described as surging development, thanks to a series of moves by the Feng army to enter the customs and expand the army, the arms sales performance of the Fuyuan machine factory is extremely gratifying, and the arms produced have basically just left the factory and have been transported to the front line, and it is not an exaggeration to say that it is in short supply, just the business of arms manufacturing. In 1907, the Fuyuan Machinery Qì Factory created a gross profit of more than 4 million yuan.

In addition to the arms manufacturing industry, another major business of Fuyuanji Factory: steel manufacturing, the situation is also very good, Fuchang wholly-owned Tangshan Iron and Steel Plant has invested in a number of iron mines in Fushun, Tangshan and other places, the source of iron ore is sufficient, and the cooperation with a number of coal factories in Tangshan, Fushun and other places can also get high-quality coal supply.

In addition to the steel used to make munitions required by the Fuchang itself, the main sales direction of Tangshan Iron and Steel Plant is the steel needed for large-scale infrastructure projects, and Tongguò supplied the rails required for the Anfeng Railway, Huludao Linear Railway, Yingkou Linear Railway, Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway, Fushun Linear Railway and other railways, as well as the steel required for a series of urban construction and port construction projects in Huludao and Yingkou, and Tangshan Iron and Steel Plant has been initially developed and began to make profits.

At the beginning of this year, they obtained rail orders for the Jinpu Railway and Longhai Railway, the two major domestic arteries, and these two large orders alone are enough to make Tangshan Iron and Steel Plant continue to make profits for many years.

As a complex enterprise of heavy industry, Fuyuanji Qì Factory naturally has more than these two major items, in fact, Fuyuanji Qì Factory also has a large number of affiliated enterprises and subsidiaries, including timber mills, chemical factories and even hospitals, schools, etc. However, these subsidiaries are either for the Fuyuan Machinery Factory itself, or they are pure public welfare undertakings, and their profitability is very limited.

For example, timber mills and chemical factories are typical supporting enterprises, mainly for the arms manufacturing industry of Fuyuanji Factory, while hospitals and electric light companies are typical public welfare undertakings, and the board of directors of people has never expected to rely on them to make profits, and the school, especially Tangshan University of Technology, this university is more like a scientific research institution set up in the factory, not to mention making profits, every year the Fuyuan Machinery Factory, hundreds of thousands of dollars have to be pasted upside down.

However, in any case, the current Fuyuanji factory relies on the two major industries of arms manufacturing and iron and steel, and its profitability is very high, as you can see from just looking at the financial report of the Fuyuanji factory in the first quarter of 1908.

In the first quarter of 1908, the headquarters of Fuyuan Machinery Factory and its subordinate enterprises, including its total assets, have reached more than 40 million yuan, which is not an exaggeration to say that it is rich and rivals the country, and this total asset does not include hidden assets such as brand and technology.

In the first quarter, the total sales of the factory reached 18 million yuan, and after deducting the messy costs, its net profit in the first quarter was as high as 2 million yuan.

However, why is the Fuyuan Machinery Factory, which is operating so well, still accused by the board of directors of unfavorable management and asked the leadership to come up with a plan to increase profitability?

In fact, this problem is quite simple, that is, since the establishment of the factory for many years, the Fuyuan machine has not carried out even one large-scale dividend, although it is said that a part of the profits will be taken out every year to dividends, but the vast majority of the factory's operating profits are used for reinvestment and expansion.

In the past few years, they can understand that the factory does not pay dividends, after all, the development needs it, and now the factory has obviously embarked on a regular basis, everyone thinks that it has been boiling for several years, seeing that the operation of the factory in 1908 is very good, and the expected profit is even as high as 10 million, whether it is a small shareholder or a major shareholder, they can't sit still. They want to get a return on their investment.

Zhao Chenbin knows about this, why? Because he rejected the dividend proposal at every board meeting, relying on Fuyuan Company's shares of up to 26% of Fuyuan Machinery Factory, and then pulling in several major shareholders such as Dingsheng Bank, he relied on the majority of shares to forcibly reject the dividend proposal every time.

Zhao Chenbin did this, in fact, it was not his intention, but he was instructed by Zhao Dongyun.

Zhao Chenbin's vision has been getting higher and higher in recent years, since serving as the chairman of the board of directors of Fuyuanji Factory, he has watched Fuyuanji Factory and Fengjun grow together, Fuyuanji Factory is the foundation of Fengjun's expansion and war, and it is an important pillar of Zhao Dongyun's struggle for hegemony, and although Zhao Chenbin is the chairman of the board of directors of Fuyuanji Factory, he is a member of the Zhao family.

So he thinks about things in the interests of the Zhao family, and what are the interests of the Zhao family? From beginning to end, there is only one: that is, to support Zhao Dongyun to unify the country, so that the Zhao family can reach the top of the first family in China, as for money, to be honest, the current Zhao family is really not short of money.

Relying on the profits of a series of other subsidiaries of Fuyuan Company, the Zhao family is not only not short of funds, but even squeezes out a part of it every year to repurchase the shares of Fuyuan Machinery Factory, last year, Fuyuan Company owned only about 20 percent of the shares of Fuyuan Machinery Factory, but after a year of share repurchase, it has repurchased six percentage points of shares, for which Fuyuan Company has also invested a lot of money.

The Zhao family has begun to transform from a pure business family to a political family, and many children in the family have begun to enter the military and political two terms under the influence and support of Zhao Dongyun, and Zhao Dongyun's cousin Zhao Dongzhi is the most obvious example, and now he is already an army colonel, and he has become the most obvious symbol of the Zhao family's comprehensive military and political affairs.

At present, although the status of the children of the Zhao family in the military and political terms is not high, and the total number is not large, but over time, as Zhao Dongyun's power becomes more and more huge, the children of the Zhao family gradually rise to the top with the passage of time, which will inevitably make the entire Zhao family exert more influence in domestic politics.

As the saying goes, one person ascends to heaven, and the rise of Zhao Dongyun is bound to make the entire Zhao family rise.

Although Zhao Chenbin said that he was in the business circle, he was different from ordinary businessmen, he shouldered more political pressure, he tried his best to develop the Fuyuanji factory over the years, and fought for power and profit with a large group of shareholders, in order to make the Fuyuanji factory better serve Zhao Dongyun's unification cause.

In order for the Fuyuan Machinery Factory to better serve Zhao Dongyun's great cause of reunification, then there is one thing that must be done, that is, to solve the problem of supplying weapons and ammunition to the Feng army.

The series of measures implemented by Zhao Chenbin in the Fuyuan Machinery Factory were actually aimed at expanding the arms manufacturing industry.

Therefore, most of the profits of the Fuyuan Machinery Factory over the years have been used by the leadership of the Fuyuan Machinery Factory headed by Zhao Chenbin for their own development and expansion of scale, in order to produce more ordnance weapons and develop newer weapons and equipment for the army.

As for dividends to shareholders, this has never been within Zhao Chenbin's consideration.

However, not everyone is as important as Zhao Chenbin to support the development of Fengjun, the scale of the Fuyuan Machinery Factory is so large, and its shareholders are very large, and the Zhao family's Fuyuan Company currently only controls 26% of the shares of the Fuyuan Machinery Factory, and the other shares are divided by the major capitalists in the north, especially those banks, money banks and other financial institutions in the north are the main force controlling the shares of the Fuyuan Machinery Factory.

After all, the scale of the factory is huge, and it is impossible for a private person to come up with millions of funds to buy the shares of the factory, and only those financial institutions have the strength to continue to buy the shares of the factory.

However, these financial institutions have a characteristic, that is, they also need to make profits, and they also need to pay dividends to shareholders and investors.

Seeing that the value of the shares of the Fuyuan Machinery Factory under his control is getting bigger and bigger, but in the past few years, he has not been able to get a dime in dividends, which makes many financial institutions quite depressed.