On the streets of new york. There are three tailors living at the same time, and their craftsmanship is good. However, because we live too close, business competition is fierce. In order to grab business, they all want to put up an attractive signboard to attract customers.
One day, a tailor hung a sign in front of his door, which said, "The best tailor in new york!" " "
Another tailor saw the sign, quickly wrote a sign and posted it the next day. The sign says, "The best tailor in the country!" "
The third tailor was very worried when he saw that two colleagues hung up such big advertising signs one after another and stole most of the business. The tailor began to eat for the signboard. One said "the best tailor in new york" and the other said "the best tailor in the country". They're all so big. Can I say the best tailor in the world? Isn't this a little too fake? At this time, the son came back from school, asked his father why he was in a hurry, and told him that he might as well write these words.
On the third day, the third tailor hung up the signboard, and sure enough, the tailor's business was booming from then on.
What does the sign say? It turns out that the tone written on the third sign is very small compared with the first two: "the best tailor in this street!" " "
This street is the best, the best of the three. You see, the clever third tailor didn't exaggerate his shop, but used reverse thinking. When choosing advertising words, he chose the word "this street" which is much smaller than "the whole country" and "new york" geographically. This small "street" covers the big "new york" and even the big "country".
This is just a short story. Jewish businessmen often use the method of swallowing elephants to gradually expand their business fields and scale in order to achieve a monopoly position.
Jewish businessmen can constantly create and invent various forms of industrial organizations, benefiting from their characteristics of being good at running enterprises through the operation of capital. /kloc-in the 9th century, the Rothschild family developed an international financial organization-international syndicate; In the 20th century, American Jewish industrialists developed investment banks. By the 1960s, Jewish industrialists were at the forefront of creating a new form of industrial organization, that is, joint large enterprises.
A joint venture is a holding company that realizes various purposes. It is composed of profit centers of different nature, and its main purpose is to coordinate the centers. Different from the traditional holding company, the main purposes of the joint venture are: firstly, through mergers and acquisitions, the previously idle or improperly used assets of the defendant company can be reasonably utilized, thus promoting capital proliferation; Second, through mergers and acquisitions, we will constantly set up new enterprises, issue new shares in the securities market, and make profits through the sale of stocks.
These two points * * * show that only part of the main profit of the joint venture comes from new products.
Market penetration, income growth and the improvement of price profitability. , mostly from stock trading in the securities market. This situation itself means that the merger and acquisition activities of large-scale joint ventures, to some extent, are to borrow money from investment banks first, and then repay the loans with the funds raised after selling shares, and then buy enterprises and expand joint ventures. Obviously, this way of development is easy for small companies to annex large companies. However, the existence of conglomerates depends on the continuity of this cycle.
This new form of industrial organization was invented by American Jewish financiers and industrialists in the 1960s. At that time, the American economy continued to prosper and the securities market was extremely active. The government adopted a relatively laissez-faire policy, which created good conditions and environment for Jewish industrialists to practice this "highest form of creative capital management".
It was a group of Jewish investment banks that invented this new industrial form, such as Texteron, Lehman Brothers, Lazard Freers, Loeb Rhodes and Goldman Sachs. In the construction of joint ventures, a group of Jewish enterprises are the most enthusiastic, such as Linit Conwater Company, Lisko Data Program Equipment Company, Chapman Company of Mei Lite and Scott Company. Among them, Mei Lite Chapman and Scott Company are considered as the first joint venture company, and its operator Luis wolfson is regarded as the father of the joint venture company, although the first person to put forward this idea is Roy Little of Teflon Company. At the peak of Mei Lite Chapman and Scott Company, it included shipbuilding, construction, chemical industry, loan issuance and other businesses, and its total sales amounted to about 500 million dollars. During this period, wolfson was one of the highest paid managers in the United States, with pre-tax income exceeding $500,000 per year.
In the 1960 s, the joint venture became popular with its continuous development of snake-swallowing elephants. Many old enterprises with a certain status, even if they are not taken over, are uneasy and have a great sense of Enemy at the Gates.
However, with the stock market crash of 1969, the subsequent economic recession, the less laissez-faire and the party's coming to power, the joint venture has been restricted in all aspects. Since Nixon took office, he has instructed the anti-monopoly department of the Ministry of Justice to take action against the so-called "collusion between Jews and cowboys".
As a result, within two months, the stock of 13 joint venture plummeted and the market value of * * * lost 5 billion dollars. However, the group companies did not completely collapse, but their performance began to stabilize.
Among Jewish industrialists, besides Steinberg's Lisko Company, perhaps Elijah and its joint trademark company can better represent the characteristics and rise and fall of joint ventures.
In 1960s, Erie Blake was famous as a "corporate predator" or even a "pirate" in American business circles. Because he is very good at evaluating enterprises and taking corresponding actions. But such a talented industrialist became a monk halfway.
Blake is a graduate of Talmud College (Rabbi College). He moved to America from Poland with his parents and worked as a rabbi on Long Island for three years. Later, he felt that preaching was meaningless, so he gave up his position as a rabbi and went to Columbia Business School instead.
After leaving school, he worked for Lehman Brothers for a period of time, managing the property of the Rosenwald family. Since then, he has acquired a troubled bottle cap manufacturing company-American Hill-Karp Company.
In Blake's own words, this is "a very small company with huge problems". Blake reformed the company and renamed it AMK Company, and then he embarked on the road of wholesale procurement.
Soon, Blake bottle cap manufacturing company with assets of only $40 million began to "hunt down" another problematic company-John Morrel. This is a canned meat food enterprise, the scale is 20 times that of AMK company, and the assets are 800 million dollars.
Blake just stuffed the troubled John Morrel Company into his wallet and turned to pursue a banana planting and transportation company with a long history and headquarters in Boston-United Fruit Company. United Fruit Company has hundreds of thousands of hectares of plantations in Central America, its own refrigerated fleet and 37 refrigerated ships, with annual sales of 500,000 US dollars. The company's shares are not valued by people in the securities market, and can only be regarded as weak capital preservation shares, because the company's operating conditions depend on the temper of natural persons or foreign politicians. However, this company has two unknown advantages, one is that it has no debt, and the other is that it has $6,543.8 billion in cash and working capital. It is these two points that attracted the attention of Blake, a shrewd appraiser.
Blake got the news by chance from a brokerage company, which recommended the stock of United Fruit Company to its customers at a higher price two years ago, and now he is looking for someone to sell it. Black seized the opportunity and took immediate action. He bought the stocks in the hands of these brokers first and got there first. Black borrowed $35 million from the banking group headed by Morgan Guarantee Trust Company and bought 733,200 shares at a price of $56 per share, which was $4 higher than the market price. This transaction is the third largest in the history of new york Stock Exchange.
After Blake took the lead. I hope to win without fighting and buy United Fruit Company. But other smart people also saw that the company had oil and water, so there was a scuffle. Within a few months, the stock price rose from $50 to $88 through three bids. 1968 was the peak of the merger frenzy in the 1960s. For Blake, it was very tempting to buy convertible bonds and warrants in a package at the price of $80 to 100. When the smoke cleared, AMK became the winner, and Blake acquired more than 360,000 shares through Goldman Sachs.
Blake named the newly formed joint large-scale enterprise "Joint Trademark Company", which is a comprehensive food processing enterprise, and its scale is extremely large and daunting. However, the business situation is not commensurate with this.
The stock market crash of 1969 and the subsequent economic recession interrupted the continuous operation of Black's snake swallow elephant, and the continuous natural and man-made disasters made its losses keep rising.
1970, the company lost $2 million, 197 1 24 million. 1972 and 1973, ok, break even. 1974, the company's total revenue was $2 billion, but the loss reached 43.6 million.
United Fruit Company suffered natural disasters one after another: hurricanes destroyed many fruit crops in Central America;
Drought and poor harvest lead to global food shortage, and the price of cattle feed has soared. To make matters worse, seven countries in Central and South America followed the example of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
In order to offset the deficit caused by the increase in oil prices since 1973, seven banana exporting countries jointly decided to levy an export tax of 50 cents or 1 US dollar on 40 pounds of bananas per box. Honduras is one of only three countries that actually levy such a tax. The tax in Honduras is 50 cents per case.
Since 35% of the bananas of the United Trademark Company are produced in Honduras, and each box costs 50 cents, the accumulated amount will reach 654.38+0.5 million US dollars, which is not a small expense for the United Trademark Company.
At this time, the official channel of Honduras released the rumor that the tax could be appropriately reduced, because if the United Trademark Company paid another $5 million, the President of Honduras would halve the tax. In this way, the company can reduce taxes by 7.5 million dollars. This is a blatant solicitation of bribes. After negotiating with Honduras, the company agreed to pay a bribe of $2.5 million. Subsequently, through the company's senior staff in Europe, the company deposited $ 654.38+0.25 million into the account of a Swiss bank, and promised that the rest would be deposited one after another. Later, Blake was under great pressure to acquiesce in bribery, so the balance was never paid. There is no need to send it after that. The hurricane destroyed 70% of the banana forest in Honduras, resulting in losses as high as19.5 million US dollars.
Serious losses forced Blake to sell its subsidiary to make up for the losses, and the stock of United Trademark Company fell to $4 per share. This company with a total revenue of more than $2 billion is only worth $40 million in the eyes of the public. At this time, the bribery case of the President of Honduras was exposed again. Under all these pressures, Blake collapsed. The industrialist, because of his morality and dedication, couldn't stand the failure and scandal. Finally, on February 3rd, 1975, he jumped from his office on the 44th floor of the Pan-American Building and died.
There are many accidental factors in Blake's failure, which does not mean the inevitable failure of the industrial organization form of joint large enterprises. Someone commented in 1969 that Blake's talent is "an asset manager, and it doesn't matter whether he can distinguish banana trees from potted palm trees".
His ability lies in discovering great value, gradually controlling it, putting it into operation and further discovering more assets. To some extent, Jewish businessmen generally show such an ability or quality. From an abstract point of view, the operation of an enterprise is nothing more than the process of capital appreciation. Therefore, the operation of an enterprise can have many levels, such as technology and management, but the highest level must conform to the general law of capital appreciation, that is, financial or asset management that meets the general requirements of the existence and development of capital itself. This is also an area that requires inspiration, intuition and creativity.
If asset managers like Blake can't tell the difference between banana trees and potted palm trees, it's not that they only know finance, but that they often forget that they only know finance.