Greenwich has a beautiful environment, picturesque scenery, many villa areas and is very quiet. Most hedge fund workers can walk to work, and the greenery is everywhere. This place is also very suitable for the elderly, and fund managers over 60 years old can live peacefully.
But if you just want to live in a big house with a good environment, there are many such places in the north of New York far away from Manhattan, why must it be Greenwich?
Greenwich has passed through dozens of places Years of development have led to the current scale. It can be said that it was formed spontaneously, but there are also government factors involved. Its taxes are particularly favorable, which attracts many hedge funds to locate there.
When Greenwich started trying to attract hedge funds decades ago, local taxes were much lower than in New York. An annual income of about ten million dollars would be $500,000 less in Greenwich than in New York. Coupled with the good environment, convenient transportation, and not far from New York, these tax savings really attracted the first batch of hedge fund companies.
The tax rate in Greenwich is also lower than that in New York. For example, the property tax on real estate is only 12/1000 in the town, while it is 30/1000 in the nearby state of New York. But with low tax rates, how does the Greenwich government run? To a large extent, it relies on donations from hedge fund tycoons, including public schools, churches and libraries, which is also a very important aspect of balancing the budget.
Logically speaking, institutions like hedge funds can place orders remotely in transactions. The exchanges in the financial market have just become a concept. The geographical location is not important. Hedge funds should not care about the office. Why do regions have to be clustered together?
In fact, the hedge fund industry is the industry with the highest requirements for agglomeration effects.
Many institutional investors in the United States say this. They basically choose funds in New York and Greenwich, and rarely go to other places. Quite simply, business travel costs money. Institutional investors who choose to invest in hedge funds must first conduct due diligence on the fund, which requires a sufficient number of visits.
Moreover, investors need to track their investment portfolio regularly, and it is always inconvenient to be far away. This is why once the scale effect is established, it will be difficult to shake this position.
Looking around the world, hedge fund gathering areas are generally located in coastal areas because Internet speed is very important. Now it’s all about milliseconds, and a few seconds difference in network speed is a big disadvantage. In addition, the hedge fund center must be close to the financial center, because it involves bank exchange, and it must be close to at least a relatively large branch. The small town of Greenwich meets these conditions, so it is natural that there are a large number of hedge fund companies.
Hedge fund bases also need to have strict security systems. In 2003, a famous kidnapping occurred in the basement of Greenwich. ESL is a well-known fund that controls approximately 9 billion U.S. dollars. Its boss was once the richest man in Connecticut. This man was kidnapped in an underground parking garage. , those who kidnapped him were three young men. They didn’t know that he was the richest man in Connecticut, so they blackmailed him. He gave them a card with 5 million US dollars in it. Those people were so happy that they took it They went out to buy pizza with $5 million. When they were buying pizza, the police arrested them based on transaction records. This is an issue of external security, and there is also an issue of internal security. There was an incident on July 20, 1999. A hedge fund manager of a certain company lost all his own funds of US$105,000 within two months and resented his colleagues, "If I lose, you will win." ", he took an automatic assault rifle and killed 12 people and wounded 13 others. It caused a huge shock in North America at that time.
Now, the security system in Greenwich is very strong. For example, there are police dogs at the entrance. If you bring any weapons in, you will be discovered. There is no need to worry about safety issues anymore.
In addition to its palatial mansions, Greenwich is also famous for its waterways, winding country roads, forests, meadows and canyons, turning it into the world's most beautiful hedge fund capital.
Kalundborg, Denmark
An ecological city of industrial growth
Imagine if the industrial chain of an industrial city is like a food chain, A < /p>
Company B’s waste is company B’s food, the steam from the power plant is provided to the pharmaceutical factory, and the sludge from the pharmaceutical factory becomes fertilizer for neighboring farms. Is this model possible?
The Danish city of Kalundborg is the embodiment of enterprise innovation and circular economy. Kalundborg is located about 100 kilometers west of Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. It is a small town with about 50,000 residents. Over the past 40 years, Kalundborg has created an industrial production model. Your waste is my raw material concept, proving that cross-industry resource recycling is not a dream.
Initially, there was only one thermal power plant and one oil refinery. After several years of development, starting in the late 1960s, Kalundborg's major companies exchanged steam, water of different temperatures and purity, and various by-products or "waste" with each other. Since the 1980s, local development departments have realized that they have gradually and spontaneously created a system, which they call the "industrial production system."
The development of the "industrial recycling system" has made this unknown town famous in the world. After decades of development, its scale and influence have continued to expand, and it has become an important factor for other countries to develop circular economies and implement regional recycling. A traditional model of economics.
It is understood that there are currently four main companies in the Kalundborg industrial production system: Denmark's largest thermal power plant, Asnessvargai Power Plant, with a power generation capacity of 1.5 million kilowatts; Denmark's largest refinery, Stador Refinery, has an annual output of more than 3 million tons and consumes more than 5 million tons of crude oil; Denmark's largest bioengineering company, Novo Nordisk; and Swedish company Gyplock Gypsum Materials Company.
The Kalundborg Municipal Government is also involved in the operation of this generation system, which uses steam sold by the power plant to heat the city. The distance between the members in the health system is no more than a few hundred meters and they are connected together by a special pipeline system. In addition, there are sulfuric acid plants, cement plants, farms and other enterprises in the industrial park that participate in the industrial production system.
Thanks to rational linking, energy and by-products can be reused at multiple levels in these enterprises. These companies trade materials in the form of energy, water and waste, with one company's waste becoming another's feedstock. The wastewater from the refinery undergoes biological purification treatment and is transported to the power plant where it is used as cooling water for cooling the generating units of the power plant. The excess gas produced by the refinery is used as fuel for power plants, partially replacing coal and oil. The power plant can save 30,000 tons of coal and 19,000 tons of oil every year. At the same time, these gases are also supplied to gypsum material factories for drying in gypsum board production. The steam generated by the power plant is supplied to refineries and pharmaceutical plants (fermentation tanks). At the same time, the power plant also sells steam to gypsum plants and municipal governments. It even provides hot water to a breeding farm. The 70,000 tons of fly ash produced by power plants a year are used by cement plants to produce cement. Through this kind of "mutual assistance", enterprises realize the recycling of waste and achieve the purpose of energy conservation and emission reduction.
It is understood that the total investment in the 16 waste exchange projects in Kalundborg is US$60 million, and the resulting benefits exceed US$10 million per year, achieving huge environmental and economic benefits.
To explore the development motivation of Kalundborg Town, it can be seen that the first driving force comes from the policy mechanism. The government implements a mandatory high-charge policy for pollution emissions in terms of institutional arrangements, which makes the emission of pollutants a cost element. For example, waste emission taxes are levied on various polluting wastes according to their quantities, and the emission taxes are gradually increased, forcing companies to discharge less pollutants. In order to prevent enterprises from causing great harm to society by concealing hazardous wastes and evading waste emission taxes driven by the motivation to pursue profits, hazardous wastes are exempted from emission taxes, a declaration system is adopted, and the government organizes specialized agencies to handle them. At the same time, economic incentives are given to reduce pollution emissions. This is the basic reason for the emergence of Kalundborg's ecological industrial model.
The second driving force comes from corporate economic benefits and long-term development. The Kalundborg area is short of water resources and groundwater is very expensive. Direct discharge of the cooling water from the power plant will not only lead to a shortage of water supply, leaving other local enterprises with no water available and restricting their development, but they will also have to pay a sewage discharge tax. Therefore, other companies have taken the initiative to sign agreements with power plants to utilize the cooling water and waste heat generated by power plants. Because in Kalundborg, for those companies, the cost of reusing processing wastewater can save 50% compared with paying the sewage discharge tax; and compared with directly drawing new groundwater, the cost can be saved by about 75%. Therefore, water recycling has become the earliest recycling production factor. This is the core of the existence and development of Kalundborg Eco-Industry.
The third driving force comes from the ecological ethics and social responsibility of enterprises. The pharmaceutical factory in Kalundborg uses the organic waste generated by pharmaceuticals to make organic fertilizer, which is given to surrounding farms for free for use. In return, the company obtains agricultural products from the farms as raw materials. This creates a circular economic complex between pharmaceutical factories and farms, achieving zero emission of pollutants. This is the result of pharmaceutical companies pursuing a socially responsible image and ecological ethics.
Forward-looking Industry Research Institute is an “industrial research + planning + implementation” institution for characteristic towns.