Rebirth in 1998 is also a kind of life

I don't know when, in New York's universities, subway station exits, and on those non-main roads, one after another "shared bicycle booths" have sprung up.

This kind of booth is only the size of two telephone booths, and can only accommodate one person, one computer and a special small gprs signal booster inside, but corresponding to this, there is a long row or several rows of red outside the booth. The straight-handled bicycle with the words "Kuqi Shared Bicycle" sprayed on it.

Although it is difficult for ordinary people to understand why there are such idiots in this world, more than 400 shared bicycle booths have been built with huge sums of money in a place like New York, and they don’t understand why the city hall can allow this row of bicycles to be grandiose. However, this kind of transportation method, which is as low as 9 cents per hour and can enjoy 10 full refunds after the initial registration, was quickly embraced by a large number of young people. ——After all, in the beautiful country, cycling has always been a very cool fashion, and the price of bicycles here has never been cheap.

Watching three or two young people walking together laughing and walking to the shared bicycle kiosk, they took out their credit cards and swiped them in the gap of the small square behind the red bicycle seat cushion... With a click, the automatic lock of the car opened, almost He straddled up the seat chicly, with a push of his feet and a couple of threes and fives, he joined the large-scale red torrent on the street.

Looking through the window at the staff member in the shared bicycle booth who was so boring that he dozed off on the chair, an old man sitting in the back seat of the Lincoln car with a face that looked a little bit like Popeye nodded and expressed his support for the cast. The group of people who voted for China World Trade Center gave a thumbs up silently—although he still held a wait-and-see attitude towards the concepts of "sharing economy" and "solving the pain points of the last mile of traffic" that the people who voted for, but had to Admittedly, this kind of centralized blasting method that does not spare a lot of money has immediate effects in terms of advertising effects, template demonstrations, and trend induction.

The most important thing is that this kind of business model that seems to be too laissez-faire is undoubtedly a dead end for other companies-the quality of the people in Europe and the United States is placed there. Mode, among other things, the violent damage or theft of vehicles alone is enough to completely bankrupt a company that is not weak.

But this biggest pain point is not a problem for Zhutou International Trade Co., Ltd., no, "Kuqi Sharing Technology Co., Ltd."—those guys have another shady background there, facing such a group of ruthless people Well, as long as it's not brain teasing, ordinary bastards would never dare to die like this after being greeted in advance by local snakes.

Of course, the world is definitely full of all kinds of accidents, and it is normal to encounter unsightly Xiaobai or non-subjective damage from time to time, but this is completely acceptable for Kuqi Sharing Technology Company It is said that the number of shared bicycles in New York alone has reached 2.3, and the average daily use frequency has exceeded 5 times per shared bicycle, but they are produced by a large oriental country, and the actual cost is low.

From these aspects, Zhutou, no, the business run by the Kuqi Technology company has a moat innately, and it is no wonder that they dare to share everything selflessly in the early stage. Pioneer" look.

only……

The old man felt a little uneasy when he thought of the several banks that had begun to take the bait under this mode similar to the wireless pose machine card payment mode. Based on his decades of experience in shopping malls, this has been reported by major media recently. The intention behind the "very innovative and subversive" shared bicycle project is not simple; and the people from Zhutou International Trade Co., Ltd. set up a holding company to specialize in the operation of this project, and went directly to the listing uncharacteristically. He smelled something else.

Very innovative?

Thinking of what happened in the past two years, the old man smiled self-deprecatingly, and then closed the window, please tell him: "Go to Zhutou Private Equity, we have an appointment with Mr. Lu at 10:30, it is rude to be late. thing."

Hearing this, the driver in front replied respectfully and quietly, "Okay, Mr. Kenneth!"

Kenneth?

If other traversers saw this scene, they would definitely cry out in surprise...

This is not the case of filing for bankruptcy at the end of last year, being cleared from the board of directors, and finally being forced to sell the property to repay debts and litigation costs. The protagonist of the largest financial fraud case in the history of the beautiful country-the chairman of Enron, the close friend of Bush Jr. Friends, and Kenneth who was finally crowned "evil"?

Shouldn't he be obediently hiding at home, facing endless lawsuits and various executions, why would he appear here without any shit?

........................

As one of the classic cases that must be taught in many majors such as accounting, finance, economics, marketing, and economic law, it is estimated that there are not many people in later generations who do not know Enron, the largest bankrupt company in the history of the beautiful country.

Founded in 1985, the company was formed by the merger of Pretty Country Houston Natural Gas Company and Northern Inland Natural Gas Company, with its headquarters in Houston, Texas;

Under the leadership of Kenneth Ray, the first chairman and CEO with rich contacts in both political and business circles, Enron has gradually grown from an unknown ordinary natural gas dealer to an annual turnover of up to 15 years in just 10 years. A super giant with hundreds of billions of US dollars and a profit value of nearly 500 billion US dollars; it once entered the top 7 in the ranking of the "Top 500 Beautiful Country", and ranked 16th in the world's top 6, and it was also ranked in the survey of the magazine Won the title of "Most Innovative Company" for [-] consecutive years.

To be fair, if only from a commercial point of view, Enron was established in 1987 by relying on its leading position in the natural gas industry, and its actions to financialize natural gas, a bulk energy commodity, are enough to deserve This title, after all, the price of natural gas fluctuates in real time with the market, there is a lot of risk for both buyers and sellers of natural gas who do not know the future price, and futures of natural gas can make the price of natural gas like a stock in an unprecedented way. deal.

Relying on the natural gas forward trading market, Enron gradually successfully transformed from a natural gas transportation company to an energy wholesale market, and then went further and further on the road of "financialization of real enterprises" out of control—by 1999, In addition to being the world's largest natural gas purchaser and seller and the world's largest electricity trader, Enron is also the world's leading energy wholesale market maker, the world's largest e-commerce trading platform, and can even cooperate with General Motors, Exxon , Mobil, Shell and other century-old stores are on an equal footing;

However, everyone on the earth knows that once a real enterprise takes the path of Wall Street, it will inevitably face the risk of being bound by short-term interests and data reports;

In addition, the current CEO Jeffrey, one of Enron's Big Three, is a ruthless man who advocates a wolfish culture. In order to squeeze every potential of employees, he pays employees more than double the industry's standard salary and a single payment of up to At the same time, the huge bonus of 500 million US dollars also gives a 10%-15% tail elimination rate that is enough to scare the peers to death. A super company with tens of thousands of people will lay off thousands or even tens of thousands of people every year. How dare you imagine?

Ever since, under this kind of incentive mechanism that fully stimulates the greedy nature of human beings and the high-pressure working environment that is enough to make people collapse, the wolf-like employees of Enron Company rely on their invincible market maker business for green money. The tentacles have extended to the fields of electricity, plastics, steel, weather markets, etc., and with the acquiescence of the top management, they have invariably falsified profits, no, it is a financial accounting method, and the data reports of various high-leverage investment projects have been made beautiful , and then make money from the stock market-in fact, this is an old tradition of Enron. As early as 1987, with Kenneth's secret encouragement, some traders did this in the oil futures market. Lost $9000 million within days.

It stands to reason that this kind of game is similar to drumming and passing flowers, no matter how skilled you are, you should have revealed your secrets after playing for more than ten years;

But here is where the benefits of Enron, a company that started as an industry, emerged——In 1991, Enron actually persuaded the SEC to adopt a brand-new bookkeeping method of "market value valuation" and successfully deceived all investors. .

You know, under normal circumstances, even if most companies sign a 30-year business contract, everyone will only look at how much performance you have made this year. After deducting this year's cost, it will be counted as your profit this year. Then use this profit value to estimate your value in the stock market;

But the market value is different. It is also a 30-year business contract. From the minute it is signed, it has its own corresponding market value. This value corresponds to what the contract can generate in the next 1 years. profits—that is to say, after adopting market value valuation, Enron can reflect the profits of this business in the next 30 years in the financial statements of the year the contract is signed. The company is much higher, and the return rate of investors is naturally much higher than other companies.

In theory, there is nothing wrong with this kind of trick. After all, many financial companies have also done it. After all, there is a fixed model for how much the contract is worth. Everyone can figure it out—— At worst, if the value of the contract increases next year, I will record a profit on the report; if the value of the contract falls in the next year, I will record a loss on the report, which is extremely simple and clear.

However, this pricing method is very convincing in terms of superficial business value for a major industrial company involved in the energy industry like Enron; To put it simply, how much is a natural gas transportation contract worth, and how do ordinary people evaluate it?Didn't I say how much it is worth?After all, this thing is not a purely physical commodity. There are many factors involved in the international environment, politics, military, technology, etc. Given Enron's relationship in the political and business circles, there are countless ways to make the value of this contract year after year bullish. .

Ever since, after Zhengda Guangming obtained the "correction fluid" for modifying the books, Andrew, the cfo of one of Enron's Big Three, suggested that the company prepare a large number of SPE shells and use Enron's stock to mortgage or borrow money for financing, and finally use the money To purchase other assets of Enron, so as to convert Enron's liabilities into equity through bookkeeping, and then transfer the risk to these spe entities, and finally keep Enron's own liabilities on the books at a low level, further inflated book profits;

On a certain level, this small closed-loop gameplay is somewhat similar to a Ponzi scheme—as long as Enron’s books are done well, its stock can rise slowly; and as long as Enron’s stock rises sharply, those The spe who holds Enron stock as collateral can rely on the price difference in the middle and continue to toss around until Enron has a major benefit to offset the difference in the middle account price or the final thunderstorm.

Although Enron has become more and more unrestrained on the road of financial fraud, with its ballast-like natural gas business, dazzling investment map and first-class political and business relations, in fact, even if there are no major benefits, this game of drumming and passing flowers At least a few more years to play.

It's a pity... They were born at the wrong time, and they happened to meet the stock market crash in 2000-2001.

Last year, Enron, which had no way to raise enough money to balance its accounts in the depressed stock market, had no choice but to publish its financial statements for the third quarter of 2001;

When the account book with a total loss of 6.18 million US dollars was announced, it seemed that someone was behind the scenes. Enron, which did not take this loss report seriously, was surprised to find that... following the subsequent actions one by one, their own The empire has a tendency to collapse.

First, a well-known website published an article disclosing the complex transactions between Enron and two other related companies, Marlin2 Trust Fund and Osprey Trust Fund. Enron borrowed 34 billion US dollars through these two funds, but these debts were never disclosed in Enron's quarterly and annual reports.

On the same day that followed, the Securities and Exchange Commission of the Beautiful Country focused on Enron, requiring Enron to voluntarily submit details of certain transactions, and began a formal investigation of Enron on October 10—once the problem was found out and If it is made public, the Anran Empire will be in immediate danger, and it will only be a matter of minutes before it collapses.

谷璣

Originally according to the historical track, under the strong pressure from the regulators, media and market in the beautiful country, on November 2001, 11, Enron would submit a document to the China Securities Regulatory Commission in the beautiful country, admitting that it had falsely reported its profits from 8 to 1997. 2001 million US dollars, and did not take into account the huge debt; after the news came to light, Enron's stock price fell from 5.86 US dollars per share three months ago to 90.56 US dollars per share, and its market value fell from 0.26 billion US dollars at the peak to 800 million US dollars After that, it formally applied for bankruptcy protection to the bankruptcy court. The value of assets listed in the bankruptcy list was as high as 2 billion U.S. dollars, becoming the largest bankrupt enterprise in the history of the beautiful country at that time.

but……

To Kenneth's disbelief, just as he was being targeted by the Securities and Exchange Commission of the Beautiful Country for Enron, and because someone was obstructing him, he was devastated after trying to establish relationships everywhere, a young oriental beauty suddenly came to him. , and expressed his willingness to spend 15 billion U.S. dollars, plus a series of new contracts with various SPE institutions to help Enron tide over the difficulties-although later generations of Enron admitted that they had falsely reported profits of 5.86 million U.S. dollars, but it is obvious that this company A company that has been making fakes for more than ten years is absolutely impossible to have such a small hole,

You must know that the losses caused by the successive failures of several large projects in India and Europe in the past few years alone are far more than that. In 1999, a new streaming media business that was regarded as a "knowing star" increased by 1.1 billions of dollars in false revenue, and the rest of the false accounts are not known—otherwise, with Kenneth's relationship in the political and business circles and Andrew's professional level, after hearing the news, he would have already hedged the money. The account was flushed.

In fact, after two hours of detailed discussions, in the end, the mixed-race beauty named Lu Sisi readily paid 31.7 billion US dollars plus more than [-] new contracts for major SPE institutions and left;

And this month later, the investigation on Enron Company finally came to nothing—out of some considerations, Enron Company, which has always denied that it had falsified its accounts, was finally found to have more than 3000 million US dollars in accounting problems, but so A little money is really not a big deal for such a huge empire. After paying a fine of more than 6000 million US dollars, Enron successfully survived this crisis.

Of course, affected by this, Enron's stock fell from $90.56 per share at its peak to $78.1 per share, which can be regarded as a traumatic injury—but compared to the original crash, it only lost so much A few hundred million dollars can be regarded as a blessing in misfortune.

In addition, with the gradual recovery of the beautiful country's stock market and the use of military forces by the beautiful country abroad, Enron's stock price began to rise again. Although it did not reach the peak value, the price of 83.6 US dollars per share was also It was enough to make them return a wave of blood;

As for the account fraud case that was raging a while ago?

whocare?

………………

after an hour.

"Anran New Energy Technology Manufacturing Co., Ltd?"

Kenneth looked at the confusing and dizzying shareholding structure chart in front of him and finally pointed to a subsidiary of his company that had not yet been established at all, touched his somewhat concave chin, and looked at the Mixed-race beauty: "A total of 47 corporate shareholders with cross-shareholdings only reserved 6.7% of the shares for us, Enron, the nominal largest shareholder, but they planned to borrow our company's name and asked us to go all out Is it too much to cooperate with your new energy project... Lu, isn't it?"

Lu Sisi smiled: "Don't worry, we don't plan to use the method of direct listing for this company, but take the route of IPO; according to our plan, we will conduct at least 3-5 rounds of financing before going public—— From time to time, we will naturally let some legal person shareholders spit out part of the stock according to the needs, as long as our cooperation is pleasant, we will definitely guarantee your company's capital injection priority in the second and third rounds."

In the last hour, Kenneth has known what those "partnerships" will include, which is why he is angry at this kind of dole-like priority of capital injection-whether it is the energy market or the financial market. , Enron has always been a wolf, when did it get reduced to the point where people need to be donated bones?

But when he saw the USB flash drive that the mixed-race beauty kept playing with, Kennis immediately calmed down - he didn't need to be reminded by the other party to know that it contained the unmodified account books of Enron Company, which was also helped by the other party. After spending billions of dollars, one of the "rights" due.

Thinking of what would happen to Enron once this information was exposed, Kenneth couldn't help shivering.

Compared with other overseas companies, Zhutou International Trade has already established a certain position in the beautiful country; if it were replaced by the past, it would not be so helpless, at least it can be done first;

However, ever since he found out that Enron Company would also be attacked and almost died, Kenneth, who has not yet found out who did it, has become a little unconfident about his connections and influence. Trading companies whose executives are all Chinese faces are becoming more and more cautious-since the other party dares to dangle the USB flash drive in front of him in such a grandiose manner, he must be ready for the next move, and he is not afraid of playing tricks on himself.

Thinking of this, Kenneth raised his slightly sinister eyes, and showed a kind smile: "Lu, since your company already owns 4.8% of our Anron shares, and has injected capital into more than 20 projects under our command, then We are partners, regarding the equity distribution of this new energy technology company...I respect your opinion!"

After finishing speaking, the old man with a protruding forehead seemed to ask curiously: "Lu, although I am very grateful for your help a few months ago... Without your help, Enron Company would have been finished long ago. up;"

"But, I'm curious, why did you pay so much to help me?"

"After all, with 31.7 billion US dollars in cash plus more than 50 business orders, the total value is more than 45 billion. This amount of money is enough for you to borrow leverage from the stock market to acquire 10 large-scale high-quality companies;"

"You...have you taken a fancy to the natural gas forward trading market in our hands?"

In fact, this problem has troubled Kenneth for a long time. He has never believed that there will be pies in the sky, and he will never believe that someone will spend billions of dollars to be a good person.

Even if the other party later used the money to replace 4.8% of Enron shares and more than 20 valuable investment projects, he didn't think those things were worth spending so much money at that time—as long as he wasn't Xiaobai, he would Know how easy it is to get those items off the dead body of this empire for an extremely low price when Enron is down.

After thinking about it, there is only one possibility—the other party has taken a fancy to the natural gas forward trading market in his hand, only that thing has real strategic value, and some things can only be controlled smoothly if Enron can continue to control the natural gas forward trading market only when.

It's just that even he must be cautious about some things, otherwise, once there is a problem with his position and he is caught by the others, then he will be very passive and even slip into a deeper abyss——so, He personally went out this time, in fact, he wanted to figure out this problem more.

Obviously, Lu Sisi easily understood the thoughts of this old man with a very complicated resume and background, and smiled immediately: "Don't worry, we Zhutou International Trade is just a purely commercial company-we ​​don't pursue other than profit. anything."

After saying the promise that she didn't even believe, as if to cover up the embarrassment in her heart, Lu Sisi showed a kind of nakedness that is often seen in European and American high-level executives, and said unabashedly: "In fact, your natural gas forward trading market is very important to us. It is worthless; the reason why we are willing to spend so much money to save Enron is that there are only three things we value!"

Speaking of this, Lu Sisi smiled playfully, and then raised three fingers: "First, Mr. Kenneth, your network resources in the political and business circles - and your right to speak in the energy and industrial fields of Texas .”

"Second, your company's CFO Andrew's superb accounting skills, and your company's strong influence over many Wall Street economic analysts;"

"Third, in fact, what we value more is...the close relationship between your company and Arthur Andersen, and the auditing rights in their hands!"

Kenneth, who thought that the third important thing would be Jeffrey, the current CEO of Enron, heard the word "Andersen", and his pupils shrank into needles.

Andersen?

Arthur Andersen, who was originally known as the "Big Five Accounting Firms" in the world together with PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, Deloitte, and Ernst & Young, was eventually removed from the "Big Five" because of Enron's financial fraud case?

Hearing that the mixed-race beauty in front of him emphasized on the three words "auditing rights", Kennis felt bitter in his heart.

I knew that in this world, there is no such thing as the world's pie.

It looks like this is going to be a big deal...