Volume 4: White Devil Chapter 158 Why Tommy Didn’t Cheat
KeyBank's headquarters in New York.
In Jim Manzi's office, he was excitedly introducing the bank's high-quality clients to Tommy and Stephen:
"The three Big Jack brothers should definitely be KeyBank's California branch's annual premium customers. We should put their photos in black walnut frames and hang them on the wall. Do you understand what I mean? Tell me, when was the last time you saw a hard-working and motivated black man? Anyway, since Lincoln freed the slaves, I haven't seen a hardworking black man again until I met these three~"
"You'd better pay attention. Yunus, Otilia and other board members are in a meeting. There are several black directors among them. They are only two walls away from you. If they hear what you are saying now, you will have to find a new job, Jim." Stephen reminded Jim while flipping through the documents in his hand.
Jim nodded. "Yes, of course we can't let people think that I don't respect black people, so what should we do? Of course..."
"Watch your wording." Stephen raised his head, looked at Jim, and said unhappily.
"No, it's about the decoration." Jim gave a completely different answer from Stephen:
"I specially installed a soundproof layer when I was decorating the office. The effect is quite good. If necessary, I can introduce the designer's phone number to you two. In actual tests, the soundproofing effect is amazing. I was making out with a high-class lady through the glass in the room, and I asked my secretary to stand on the other side of the glass and pay attention to the movements inside. As it turned out, the secretary heard nothing."
"Jim, every time I sit down and chat with you, I can hear stories about your actions with various women. If I remember correctly, this is already the sixteenth episode. Are you okay? I don't object to you having fun with women, but you make me feel uncomfortable. I can take you to nightclubs for fun, but... it feels too weird in the company. Are you that hungry?" Stephen covered his face with his hands and said weakly:
"If you hadn't brought another 13 million in revenue to our financial company this quarter, I would have reprimanded you severely at the board meeting. You should learn from Tommy. Tommy is undoubtedly a good man now. Except for Otilia who occasionally accompanies him on vacation, there is never any other woman around him."
"Learn Tommy? Mr. Major Shareholder, what gave you this illusion?" Jim bit his cigar and looked at Tommy with a big grin:
"There are probably only a few reasons why he can resist temptation in front of women. First, the other party is old and ugly, and his golf club can't get hard. Second, the other party wants to mate with him, but can't produce a health check-up report, so he is too scared to show his golf club. Third, the other party is very beautiful, but unfortunately she is black. Let's put it this way, no matter how beautiful the other party is, as long as she has one sixteenth of black blood in her body, she will be equated with the word ugly in his eyes."
"But Tommy didn't fool around in the three years between college and graduation. To be honest, I admire this guy for being so devoted," Stephen said seriously.
Jim Manz looked at Tommy and asked doubtfully, "Really?"
"That's right." Tommy smiled and said, "I'm not the kind of man who messes around."
"From what I hear, what you said can only mean that you are telling others that you don't mess around with men. I guess the reason you are being a good man is that there is something wrong with your golf club, but Ottilia didn't break up with you, which means there is no problem. There must be another reason." Jim became interested, sat at his desk, stared into Tommy's eyes, and said with a smile:
"I'm sure I can guess..."
"Hey, hey, hey, I told you, don't call me over if there's nothing else. I'm busy." Tommy interrupted Jim Manz's guess and forcibly asked the other party why he asked him to come over.
Jim looked at Stephen and asked, "Do you think this is a problem that should be discussed between you and him, or between me and him?"
"Of course it's you, Jim. I hired you and gave you shares because I hope you can solve this kind of problem for me." Stephen adjusted his tie and said to Jim.
Jim cursed, then looked at Tommy: "Your budget of three million for the new quarter has been rejected, Tommy."
Tommy widened his eyes, looked at Stephen, and then looked at Jim who was telling him: "Are you kidding? That money is very important."
Jim had a smirk on his face and nodded repeatedly while biting his cigar: "Yes, it is very important, of course we know that, but the question is, you buy your girlfriend a very expensive gift, why do you let the company pay for your bill?"
"That's for company publicity, to promote our charity, it's a necessary publicity cost." Tommy said dissatisfiedly.
"You spent more money to promote Ottilia than the BBC did on documentaries, Tommy. The American and Spanish documentary teams you arranged only quoted a price of ten thousand dollars for filming Ottilia shaking hands and talking with a black kid in Gabon, Africa for ten minutes! Three million means it's only enough to support three thousand minutes of footage at most, and your initial plan is to film for three years. You want the documentary team to film your lovely angel girlfriend for the next three years, and you still want the company to pay for you? KeyBank helped those black people dig wells in Gabon and provided clean water and toilets for two years, and it only lent them three million!"
"So I don't think I need to remind you that the sale of the Gabon loan of 3 million for 13 million was all my credit," Tommy roared at Jim.
"It was me who asked you to make the debt more complicated, and it was me who asked you to include all kinds of traps in the contract, so that Gabon could not repay the debt even if it had money, and finally got the manganese mining rights and logging rights in certain areas of Gabon! And I just wanted to help KeyBank make a documentary to record its good deeds, with no selfish motives at all. You actually want me to pay out of my own pocket? Fuck! You damn vampires!"
Jim spat out the cigar in his mouth, pointed at Tommy and cursed fearlessly: "It's my fucking credit! Your girlfriend just went there to play the angel, took him to the well and the toilet, and just spent money. I'm the one who takes care of the finality. I need to get through all the connections! Do you know that in order to pay this debt, I danced with the black and ugly old women of an African organization of the United Nations? It was because of me who got through all the connections that I was able to use the original capital of three million to recover 13 million! You didn't do anything, you just tried every means to count the money spent on buying condoms as company expenses!"
"Fuck You! Jim Manz! I swear I'm going to kick you out! You're fucking fired!"
"Fuck You Too! I'm not leaving. I will unite the board of directors to kick you out, you stingy, ignorant, lazy idiot!"
"Wow wow wow... calm down, guys~" Seeing the two people arguing more and more fiercely, Stephen quickly stood up to appease the two people who were glaring at each other like fighting cocks and ready to fight at any time:
"Calm down, it's only three million, there's no need to get angry over such a small number."
Stephen Bean did not finish studying at Stanford and officially dropped out a year before graduation. Of course, the reason he dropped out, before he was hacked to death by his old-fashioned and stubborn father, was because he no longer needed to prove himself with a diploma.
His two most successful investments in college were a 20 million investment to establish KeyBank with Tommy Hawke, and a 5 million investment to establish Dell Computer Corporation with Tommy Hawke, Benjamin Benson, Jason White and several other investors.
There is not much to say about Dell Computer Corporation . In 1985, the company launched its first product, Dell-PC, which was priced lower than other brands of personal computers with the same configuration in computer stores, and it also provided optional options. In short, users could buy a good computer for 750 yuan, but basically, if you fooled the other party, they would upgrade some accessories and purchase a few software packages out of the mentality of taking advantage. Thanks to the flexible matching and bundling sales business model, Dell's turnover in the first year reached 69 million. Although it cannot be said to be a blockbuster in the industry, it at least gained a firm foothold.
However, compared with KeyBank , Dell's return seemed insignificant. It was also the first time that Stephen Bean saw that charity could be done like Tommy Hawke did.
They took possession of Professor Yunus's small bank and eventually annexed it, successfully taking over the other party's concept as their own. Professor Yunus continued to fight poverty in Bangladesh as vice chairman of the board and head of the Asia region, while Jim started KeyBank's charitable business in Africa and Europe under the name of charity.
Generally speaking, the business starts with Ottilia and various American charities affiliated with the United Nations. They will appear in countries plagued by poverty as angels. Ottilia and those people will be kind to the point of being stupid and provide interest-free loans, hoping to help the poor in those countries who lack even basic water resources. They will use the loans to help them dig wells, provide toilets and other infrastructure, and so on.
When local government officials see Americans who are stupid but have plenty of money, they think they can cheat the money out of the Americans' hands and put it into their own wallets. So they often take the initiative to cooperate with Ottilia, and have their government and KeyBank jointly set up a company to accept the loans, and then provide necessary help to the poor in the name of the local company.
The officials want to cheat these Americans who look stupid enough to spend money to help the poor dig wells, but when the company is established, Ottilia will not be present. Instead, Jim will arrive with a group of American lawyers. In short, he will use various means such as buying off, bribing, and winning over to achieve his desired goal, that is, the government admits that it has borrowed an interest-free loan from KeyBank on behalf of those poor guys, and then let those government officials of the other country who only know how to accept bribes and can't understand the contract at all sign the contract.
The contract will have a repayment period that seems long enough, so long that those officials think they will never have to pay it back. And if the loan cannot be repaid before the deadline, no one will be held responsible. Only some of that country's resource exploitation rights will temporarily belong to the American charitable bank until the other party repays the money.
Of course, Otilia and Jim would assure each other that KeyBank did not have the ability to mine any resources, nor were they interested in doing so; they were only interested in charity.
Then, within a year or two after the contract was signed, Jim would come up with a bunch of excuses. In short, the bank had too many bad debts, cash flow problems, and was insolvent. It was forced to sell the debt to an American company that was willing to help and happened to be able to mine these resources.
Generally speaking, in order to show their support for charity, these companies often buy up the loans that KeyBank provides to small countries at high prices.
Then those new creditors will tell those shitty little countries that there are some loopholes in the contract and the repayment deadline is abnormal. They want the resources. If they don’t object, the mine will be mined by American companies starting today. If they just want to repay the loan, there is no need to rush, because the American creditors are preparing to file a lawsuit with this country first, on the grounds that they suspect that the officials of these small African countries deliberately set trap clauses in the contract in order to defraud loans. Anyway, the lawsuit will take a long time, and by then, the penalty, interest, compensation and the like added together will definitely not be a small number.
As for whether it is possible that the Americans cheated the small country? How is it possible? The documentary camera honestly recorded that Ms. Otilia, an American with compassion for the world, came to this country with money and wanted to dig wells directly for the poor. It was you officials from your country who stopped her and took the initiative to cooperate and asked you to distribute the loan. KeyBank just provided the loan unconditionally from beginning to end.
As the sovereign of many small African countries, France certainly cannot tolerate being stepped on by the Americans, but it does not have the courage to confront the United States head-on, so it can only painfully clean up the mess for the small countries, pay the prices set by the Americans, and leave the resources of the former colonies to France's own companies.
For example, Gabon's 3 million debt was sold to a U.S. mining company with a senator's family background. The price was fair, only 13 million. Then the U.S. mining company did not have to do anything and exchanged this charitable interest-free loan from the French government for 60 million. If France did not pay, the senator would sell the loan to a larger and more professional American company. At that time, the American company would actually land in Gabon and complete the mining.
The poor in Gabon got clean water and sanitary toilets, KeyBank recovered its $3 million principal without any loss, and gained a reputation for charity.
Moreover, these shareholders used another financial company to accept 10 million yuan from the mining company as a token of gratitude.
American mining companies and senators, as professional debt collectors, also received high commissions, and everyone was happy, except the French. But who the hell cares whether France is happy or not? The world no longer needs the voice of France.
This is the KeyBank designed by Tommy Hawke, the key to wealth, the missionary of American tycoons, who came in the name of God, but just came, without any salvation.
As long as the officials of that country are a little greedy, they will fall into Tommy's trap. Since the bank opened, Stephen has never seen anyone who is truly not greedy. Everyone who sees Ottilia and those real philanthropists will think it is very easy to take the money in the hands of these fools for themselves. Once this idea comes up, the business is almost done.
The idea was Tommy's, and the plan was executed by Jim. Stephen thought about it and felt that he was the only one waiting for the money. At this moment, the two guys who had contributed to the money were cursing at each other. He looked at the two of them and spread his hands:
"Tommy, there's no reason for you to let the bank pay for your publicity. If you want to promote Otilia, you have to pay for it out of your own pocket."
Seeing Tommy glaring at him, Stephen immediately continued, "One million, I will help you share one million, but the decision to let the bank pay all three million will make Jim very embarrassed at the board meeting. You have to consider him. Jim has done a lot for us. You can't treat him like this. You should apologize to him. I'm serious."
"Did you hear that? This is my brother, Jim!" Tommy smiled and said to Jim after hearing what Stephen said, "Don't think that all rich people are stingy. Stephen is definitely not. You lost half a million to me."
"Shit! Stephen, my acting is so good that you can't see this is fake? Tommy, that bastard, made a bet with me that you would be willing to help him bear part of the responsibility. I said it was impossible. You are not a fool with too much money to spend..." Jim didn't expect that half a million would be gone from him so easily. He looked at Stephen in despair and complained.
"It's not too late for me to regret now, right?" Stephen looked at the expressions of the two people and cursed in a low voice after realizing that he had been fooled.
Tommy stood up, walked behind Stephen, strangled his neck, and said happily: "Jim, please bear the half a million for me. That's what he lost to me. You don't need to pay for me, Stephen. Your performance just now moved me more than one million. I'm making a documentary for my girlfriend. Of course, I can't ask my best friend to pay for it, but I can ask the bank customers to pay for me. Jim, remember to ask the bank to help me with the loan. Also, if it's nothing important, don't bother me..."
"You've already graduated, aren't you going to take charge of the work here?" Stephen asked when he saw Jim was about to leave.
"Jim, Yunus, Otilia, the senators are all doing their jobs. Why should I change this stable structure? Of course not. I have other work to do." Tommy let go of Stephen and walked out of the office. "I will accompany Otilia to the opera, send her on the plane, and then go back to work. Please don't disturb me unless it is a holiday."
Watching this guy lazily disappear out the door, Stephen looked at Jim: "What kind of job does Tommy do?"
"I don't care what job he does. I'm still thinking about the previous question. If his golf club wasn't broken, why didn't he cheat?" Jim looked at Stephen with eyes eager for an answer and asked seriously.
