Chapter 844 - 788: Inventory
Once Mountain Eagle enters work mode, he forgets his worries...
He still doesn't know how the Kenya team is doing, but he believes Li Chengji won't fool him. Now, he needs to find a suitable supervisor for that sea prison.
After Mountain Eagle went through his social circle and phone book, he found that few people were suitable for the job...
In the end, he had to send 'Sled' to Anchorage to pick up the eccentric forensic doctor Anton, and have them partner up to manage the sea prison.
Because Mountain Eagle plans to move General Sied's pharmaceutical research lab there, Anton can conveniently share some of his former professor's research projects with this group of skilled researchers, possibly leading to unexpected results.
Mountain Eagle's own family lab will be set up in Anchorage. Daria has already talked to the doctor responsible for Mountain Eagle's treatment, and once the funds are in place, the guy will lead a team from the hospital to enter the lab.
Additionally, more professionals in biochemistry, genetics, virology, and other fields will be brought in later.
Mountain Eagle is completely clueless about these purely technical jobs; all he can do is provide funds and dictate their research directions...
The most crucial task at the moment is analyzing the 'Superman body tissue package' Anton brought from Russia, while integrating the 'Tomica Grass' into subsequent research.
Compared to those intricate and hard-to-understand research projects, the role most suitable for Mountain Eagle is that of an investor.
And to become an investor, he needs to make money!
Within a week, Mountain Eagle thoroughly sorted through his financial and industrial status...
The Financial Office in Singapore is still steadily profiting through the forex futures market. In South America, Brazil and Colombia, influenced by the United States, have currencies dropping like diarrhea.
Meanwhile, Asia's Malaysia and Indonesia have also experienced significant currency fluctuations...
The trader Chris Jon is extremely skilled, and with clear off-market information, he is almost always victorious, expanding Mountain Eagle's available funds to approximately fourteen billion dollars in just a few months.
This is also because Jon had a moment of failure at Wall Street, where he was blacklisted, so his investment strategies sometimes appear somewhat conservative...
For instance, when sniping at the Edward Foundation in the stock market, he hid half of Mountain Eagle's assets behind the funds arranged by William Hurt and his associates...
Although William Hurt and his group took the bulk of the profits, Jon managed to withdraw the initially invested funds at the fastest speed by sacrificing a portion of the earnings, making even greater gains from the forex market with more abundant funds.
Jon's string of victories not only inflated Mountain Eagle's own funds by more than double but also attracted more hot money into this Financial Office.
In fact, the funds Jon controls now far exceed Mountain Eagle's fourteen billion; the Financial Office's scale reached four billion dollars a few months ago and continues to expand...
This indeed is the correct way to play financial services!
Jon has repeatedly proposed changing investment strategies, using the boss's personal money for risks makes him feel immense pressure, so he has been advocating for the Financial Office to venture into the private equity market, starting with the clients recorded in Mr. Poincaré's notebook.
Jon privately wrote several emails to Mountain Eagle and called him multiple times to express his intention to develop a private equity fund, even planning the profit model before anything officially began.
It was then that Mountain Eagle realized those highly reputable financial companies never actually base their fundamental profit models on helping clients make money, because nobody can guarantee 100% profitability. They essentially exploit high-frequency trading to earn transaction fees and commissions from clients' trades.
This model, coupled with partially steady earnings like arbitrage trading, can support the profits of a private equity fund.
Mountain Eagle certainly supports this...
Compared to the smooth functioning of Singapore's Financial Office, Thailand's industry growth is rather mediocre.
Smuggling, money laundering, oil trade, and certain investments in land and tourism, these projects are progressing swiftly, but their profit cannot compare to Singapore's, sometimes even requiring additional investments.
The Kamui shipping gang has almost been entirely controlled by Great White Shark Sophia...
This heroic woman used a Replacer's list to knock on the doors of Thailand's judiciary and police, weaving a rather strong protective umbrella, and leveraging both legal and illicit force, used a dozen gas stations to suffocate the smugglers, making them obediently submit.
The refined oil business, once Mountain Eagle's hopeful venture, proceeded very smoothly...
Now Russia is troubled by Crimea issues, and despite the Minsk Agreement being reached, the United States and Europe clearly don't want Russia to have it easy, so while Russia's energy trade still continues, it is not as smooth as before.
Mountain Eagle seized this opportunity to integrate Anna, Amelia, and Sophia to form a refined oil trade route.
Anna, with her rich resources, coordinates loans within Russia and uses them to purchase Far East refined oil at low prices...
Amelia uses AXA Insurance Group's channels to find shipping while seeking more delivery points in Malaysia and Indonesia.
Sophia is responsible for the public front, controlling the entire trading chain, while ensuring smooth payment collection.
Mountain Eagle had high hopes for the refined oil trade, but in practice, the profit didn't meet his expected levels...
Originally, he thought of leveraging Russia's current predicament to acquire loans and purchase refined oil at low prices to sell in Southeast Asia...
Both loans and low prices he easily obtained, but upon reaching Southeast Asia, it was necessary to collaborate with local energy companies to sell swiftly.
Because smuggling channels simply couldn't handle such a scale of refined oil, not even storing such an amount was possible; real profit required increasing transaction frequency, and to quickly complete transactions, profits had to be shared with large local energy enterprises in Southeast Asia...
These companies being heavy-asset enterprises means using their channels to store and sell refined oil requires surrendering much of the profit.
Mountain Eagle had roughly calculated before, each trip by a twenty thousand ton tanker could profit 2 to 2.5 million dollars, but now according to Sophia's report, after deducting shipping costs and refined oil sales channel costs, actual profit per trip only reaches 800 thousand to 1 million dollars.
Of course, this is already quite a lot of money!
Because once terminal profit is surrendered, the most troublesome parts are eliminated, and local energy companies shielded him from most trouble.
If the channels mature, increase trips or tanker tonnage, profit is still achievable.
Additionally, in reality, the most profitable part of the entire trade route isn't the refined oil sales but rather the low-interest loans at the source...
The depreciation rate of Russia's currency is precisely Mountain Eagle's crew's profit!
Refined oil profits are minimal, but filling a twenty thousand-ton tanker requires approximately 800 thousand dollars, equivalent to 4.2 billion Rubles.
Anna has bank channels capable of easily helping Mountain Eagle legally secure loans of up to 5 billion Rubles for purchasing refined oil.
Using this money to purchase Far East refined oil, then sell, and holding US Dollar proceeds, using Anna-controlled Cyprus bank deposits to secure larger loans from Great Russia Bank.
After three transactions, Mountain Eagle had accrued nearly 20 billion Rubles in debt.
This number continues to expand as transactions persist, and as Ruble depreciation continues combined with lower exchange rates in black market trading, to date Mountain Eagle has made over 6 billion Rubles using this method.
In other words, through exploiting exchange rate arbitrage, they managed to extract 6 billion Rubles from Great Russia Bank without any collateral, while gaining close to 4 million dollars from Southeast Asia's sales terminal.
And all this happened in the past six months!
To know, many notably renowned public companies don't achieve such high net profits in six months!
Of course, compared to the Singapore office with billion-level profits, this kind of returns still pales...
However correspondingly, this profit model has helped Sophia sustain a network connecting Russia Far East and Southeast Asia, where the more beneficiaries involved, the longer the business can sustainably continue.
At first, Mountain Eagle worried such actions would provoke backlash within Russia, but reality showed his approach was trivial compared to those Russia's oligarchs...
Thus, the trade's scale keeps expanding...
Bajao person Eddie's wife Amelia, driven by earning, is planning to expand the refined oil sales channels to the Philippines and Vietnam...
Russia Far East has endless energy supply, and due to Anna's relations, refined oil prices are extremely friendly.
Mountain Eagle now can't manage all this; he stocktakes his current funds and assets, then starts contemplating a trial transaction...
Mountain Eagle's ivory walks the path of gray trade; hence the most free and most restricted markets are his optimal choices.
Currently, Mountain Eagle can't compete with traditional crocodiles in the freest trade zones, so his focus narrows down to the most restricted countries.
These countries differ, some restricted due to sanctions, like North Korea, Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, though except for Venezuela and Cuba, the risks in the other two are too high.
Besides these commonly known sanctioned countries, there are Brazil, Argentina as good options.
But after close comparison, Mountain Eagle had to abandon them. His Financial Office is habitually tapping Brazil's major artery drawing blood, deploying gray trade to erode their market now would be too hated.
Finally, Mountain Eagle's attention settled on Venezuela and Cuba...