Chapter 65 - 73: Where Did This Genius Come From
Cooperation was all well and good, but Pierre had no interest in Italian banks whatsoever.
Even without North Borneo, he wouldn’t be interested in Italy. How could investing in Italy compare to investing in Germany?
Germany—that was the real ruin, littered with... gold!
Italy...
In the end, it was all about capital. If he, like Morgan, controlled billions or even tens of billions of dollars, he would certainly invest everywhere.
But for now, the best steel had to be used for the sharpest blade.
Very soon, the feast of dividing up the spoils began. Thanks to Mussolini’s two decades of state investment, the Italian government owned a huge amount of official assets. Although a large portion was in the north, there were still plenty of high-quality assets in the south. For example, Taranto Port—the most important port in southern Italy—was snapped up by an American company for a mere $3 million.
As for the assets in the north still under German control, they could also be auctioned off, but the prices were, of course, far from ideal.
Naturally, there were also things that simply couldn’t be sold, like merchant ships.
Just as in history, at the Italian government’s auction, the merchant ships went unsold. As much as 285,000 tons of merchant shipping ended up as worthless junk that nobody wanted.
This result utterly stunned the Italians—after all, not long ago, they were convinced these ships would be in high demand. After all, German submarines were still sinking merchant ships in the Atlantic.
Logically speaking, they should have been hot commodities, especially since the shipping industry was currently booming.