Without further ado, Nanyang Company is ready to make progress. Logically speaking, it should go to Guangzhou immediately. However, the plague epidemic in Guangzhou has not yet been lifted, so it is impossible to go to Guangzhou to raise shares.
He thought over and over again and decided to send a telegram to several elders in Guangzhou to inform them of the establishment of Nanyang Company and its intention to come to Guangzhou to raise shares. Let them also be prepared. He knew nothing about Guangzhou, so he had to ask these people to lead the way.
introduce.
The first person to send a telegram was of course Ai Zhixin. He is now the director of the Guangzhou Finance and Taxation Bureau and a top financial figure. If you want to draw money from Guangzhou, you must say hello to him. The second telegram was sent to Meng Xian, asking for a stock offering.
, the support and cooperation of the bank are indispensable. As for the third copy, it was sent to Liu Xiang in Guangzhou - he paid for his one-third of an acre of land, and he had to say hello.
After drafting the telegram and handing it to the confidential officer, they walked around in an office on the third floor of the Customs Building.
This office was the original headquarters of Southeast Asia Company. Ever since he received the key from the office, he has been sitting here looking through the business files of Southeast Asia Company.
The third floor of the Customs Building belongs to the headquarters of Southeast Asia Company. The area is not small, but the third floor is actually an attic. The highest point of the roof is only 2.2 meters, and the lowest point of the eaves is only 1.8 meters. Considering the size of the people around, staying inside is a bit awkward.
Qu. Not to mention the temperature on the top floor in summer.
The company headquarters must be moved before next summer. I thought to myself, this place will become a large steamer by summer.
The headquarters of Southeast Asia Company is located here, so one can imagine the company's status in the minds of the Senate.
It also has very few staff. There are less than 20 naturalized cadres and staff working at the headquarters, and the nominal chairman is Liu Xiang. Of course, in fact Liu Xiang and his entire family are receiving dividends in the Sanya estate.
I live a small life and just collect a few "travel fees" here. The specific person in charge is the general manager who is a naturalized citizen.
It's shabby to say the least. Although Southeast Asia Company has a long history, its status among state-owned enterprises is not high. It is only a second-level state-owned enterprise. Although the Planning Institute holds 51% of the shares, it has invested very little in Southeast Asian companies over the years.
The main assets are the ships that originally surrendered to the pirates.
When I was working in Caijinkou, I saw the financial report of Southeast Asia Company. To comment on its performance, I can only describe it as "mediocre". Although Southeast Asia Company is theoretically a large shipping and trading company, most of its business uses
It is "affiliated mode".
After the leaders of all walks of life surrendered, they "invested" in the ships, affiliated them with the Southeast Asia Company, and uniformly flew the merchant ship flag and the "nine-dan flag" of the Senate, and then operated their own shipping and trading business based on the routes they were familiar with. Of course,
The size of their fleet has been greatly reduced, and the crews are uniformly deployed by Southeast Asian companies, instead of being composed entirely of their own family members, relatives and compatriots in the past.
Naturally, this extensive business model cannot bring much profit. Although the affiliation fees of Southeast Asian companies are not set low, all affiliates can share the licenses for Southeast Asian trade and mainland coastal trade, which is much lower than during the Zheng Zhilong era.
The price of 2,000 taels per flag is much cheaper. Moreover, after the company collects the anchorage fee, it has sufficient force and consular protection capabilities for its subordinate ships. The risks borne by ship owners are greatly reduced.
Even if the shipowner is too lazy to use his brains in management, just undertaking the shipping business can guarantee sufficient profits every year. This shipping business comes not only from the Senate, but also from domestic and foreign businessmen who come to the Senate-ruled area for purchasing.
Generally speaking, the profits of Southeast Asian companies are limited, but the foundation is not bad. At least it is not a mess. This somewhat reassures the people around - because he has not been able to see the detailed financial statements of Southeast Asian companies for several years.
No wonder the company's headquarters is only of such a small size. Looking at the assets, unlike what he expected, the Southeast Asian company does not have many ships. This is quite beyond his expectation. Because when the pirate gang returned, each shopkeeper had at least
With three or four ships, or even large ones like Liu Xiang, the number of ships could reach three to five hundred. He roughly estimated that the number of ships owned by the Southeast Asia Company would be at least six or seven hundred.
However, when he checked the asset list today, he found that there were far fewer ships than he imagined.
There are currently 225 ships "calling" under the name of Southeast Asian companies, of which 182 are employed by "Merchants" to operate mainland coastal freight and trade freight to Japan and North Korea. Only 43 are actually operating on Southeast Asian routes.
Boat.
Where have all the ships that came here gone now? There was some confusion around him. He called the general manager over.
The general manager of the Southeast Asia Company is Wang You, who worked under Zhu Cai's staff and later mixed up with Zheng Bao. After Zheng Bao's fall, he "abandoned the dark and turned to the light" in time. After being purified, he was assigned to work in the Southeast Asia Company.
He has been among pirate gangs for many years and has a very good understanding of pirate habits and thoughts. He has been among pirates for many years and can speak most of the dialects of pirate groups. The key is that he has only been a "master" for a long time. To put it bluntly, he is a gangster.
He only has a mouth to feed and doesn't have many common interests with the real pirate leader. Therefore, he has been listed as a "key training target" from the beginning. Wang You is also a person who is knowledgeable about current affairs, so naturally he is also "active in seeking progress."
Therefore, he quickly gained the trust of the elders. Over the past few years, he was promoted successively. When the elders had almost digested the pirates in the Southeast Asia Company, and the elders no longer served as the general manager of the company, Wang You took the throne of general manager.
.
Wang You was a little uneasy when he took office around him. It's not that he was embezzling or accepting bribes or anything like that - although Wang You wasn't perfect in recent years, he didn't do anything out of the ordinary. He just resold some special items with free shipping.
Controlled goods.
What he was more worried about was what it meant to suddenly re-appoint a senator. Wang You knew that the Senate did not trust pirates to surrender, especially pirates who had come to invest in stocks in the past. They were the targets of special attention and division.
In the first few years of the company's establishment, he served under the senators and had seen the various methods used by the senate to divide and dismantle the subordinate forces. Now he suddenly re-appointed the senators as general manager and created a "Nanyang Company". In the end,
What means?
Could it be that some of the former members of the Southeast Asia Company are "up to something evil", or are there some unscrupulous people plotting secretly?
Thinking of this, the hair on the back of Wang You's neck stood up. If this was true, wouldn't it mean that he would be imprisoned suddenly? He has been the general manager of this Southeast Asian company for several years, and at least he would have to get a "neglect of duty"
"If you are accused of being an accomplice or acquiescent, your life will be at risk..."
After hearing him ask about the number of ships, Wang You breathed a sigh of relief and said: "Chief Zhou——"
"Call me general manager."
"General Manager." Wang You quickly corrected, "This is what happened..."
It turns out that the number of pirate ships that surrendered to the Senate was indeed very large. According to the company's receipt account book, pirates from all walks of life have surrendered ships ranging from hundreds to one or two over the years. Taken together, the total number is more than a thousand ships.
.
However, the vast majority of these more than a thousand ships are small ships, and more than 60% are single-masted or double-masted ships, with a carrying capacity of no more than thirty or forty tons. Such ships can also sail, but they can basically only
It is used on offshore coastal routes. It cannot go to the distant sea. It is not cost-effective even to engage in near-shore shipping and trade.
So these small boats were quickly eliminated. All that remained were large and medium-sized ships.
"...The general manager probably doesn't know that the quality of most of these ships is not good, and many of them are material ships..."
"What is a timber ship?"
"We maritime merchants in Fujian all cut down wood and built ships a year before going overseas. The ships are not sophisticated. No matter the materials used, they are careless. Even the wood is wet wood..."
"Aren't you afraid of death when you go to Nanyang to do business and use inferior ships? Even if he doesn't go out to sea to take risks, it will be a loss if the goods float away." The surroundings are very strange.
"The general manager doesn't know that this kind of ship is a one-way trip. No matter where it goes, the goods will be sold at the local place. The ship will also be dismantled locally and sold as lumber. After everything is sold, it will come back on other sea ships.
.”
People around me are very confused about this. Shipbuilding is a high-involvement investment. A good sea-going ship can cost thousands of taels of silver, but once it is built, it can last from fifty to hundreds of years. Why should we build this?
What about building "disposable ships"? It's not that maritime merchants can't afford this money, and since they have to go to Southeast Asia for trade every year, why bother to build new ships every year?
This thing is really weird! People thought. But since the maritime merchants do this, there must be some reasons behind it.
Wang You explained that this type of ship was originally of poor quality and had been drifting at sea for several years. Most of the ships were in poor condition, so they were quickly eliminated.
The rest are all ships with larger tonnage and better condition. In fact, some of them are new ships purchased by the shareholders of Southeast Asia Company at the Hong Kong shipyard and some of the "secret warships" that have been eliminated from the navy. They are really made of
There were not many ships brought by the descendants.
"In other words, the fleets of Southeast Asian companies are now in relatively good condition."
"Yes." Wang You nodded quickly, "The flight rate is over 80%."
I thought to myself that most of the ships hired by the China Merchants Bureau were small and medium-sized ships, which were of little use to me. My main capital was the 63 ships that traveled to Southeast Asia.
"How many days will it take you to make a report on the owners of the 63 ships that currently run the Nanyang route, their ship conditions, and their operating conditions?"
"Three or four days."
"I'll give you five days." He looked around at the calendar and said, "The information must be as detailed as possible!" 1603357563