NCCnovel Chapter 457 The Collapse of Goldman Sachs
Chapter 457 The Collapse of Goldman Sachs
Sofia's plane landed in Jinan at 2 p.m.
Ling Yun sent Zhao Hu to pick her up from the airport. Sophia got into the car without saying a word, clutching her briefcase and leaning back in her seat with her eyes closed. Zhao Hu glanced at her in the rearview mirror; she had two dark circles under her eyes.
Upon arriving at the Xinghuo Group building, Sophia went straight to the top floor.
Ling Yun was waiting for her in his office. There were two cups of freshly brewed tea on the table, still steaming.
"Mr. Ling." Sophia placed her briefcase on the table, unzipped it, and pulled out a thick stack of reports. "We've finished dealing with Goldman Sachs."
Ling Yun took the report and flipped through two pages; it was filled with dense numbers and charts. He put it down. "Just tell me."
"Okay." Sophia sat down, picked up her teacup and took a sip. "Starting last week, we simultaneously targeted the tech stocks and derivatives that Goldman Sachs heavily invested in. We placed short positions in their top five Nasdaq holdings in advance. We also figured out the strike price range of the options portfolios they used to hedge their risks, and made large-scale reverse operations at key points."
"And the results?"
"On the first day, they thought it was normal market fluctuation and even added to their positions to buy at the bottom. On the second day, they realized something was wrong and started closing their positions, but we had already drained the liquidity. The more they closed, the more the price fell. On the third day—" Sophia pulled another piece of paper from her bag and placed it in front of Ling Yun, "Anderson personally called our New York office."
Ling Yun glanced down at the paper. It was Goldman Sachs' internal loss estimate, with a number circled in red: $31 billion.
"That's just on paper. Their investment in StarCraft is also finished," Sophia said. "After Dell and HP took over your shares, the alliance between Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley on the StarCraft board was completely broken. Now Dell and HP together have more than 30% of the voting rights, while Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley together have less than 25%."
What about Starry Sky's stock price?
"Since the news broke, the stock has dropped twelve points. The market doesn't have a positive outlook on a company plagued by internal strife." Sophia took another sip of tea. "Anderson was held accountable in an internal meeting last week. Their board of directors asked him to submit a written report explaining why they lost so much money on the Star Technology deal."
Ling Yun stood up and walked to the window. In the distance, on the construction site, the tower cranes were still turning. He recalled that winter afternoon in 1999 when Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, in a show of force, pressured him to relinquish his CEO position at the Starry Sky board meeting. Anderson had smiled politely then, speaking with impeccable tact, each word like a sugar-coated razor blade.
"How is Anderson doing now?"
"It's terrible," Sofia said. "He worked at Goldman Sachs for twenty years and never lost three billion on a single deal."
Ling Yun turned around. "Continue."
"We also manipulated the bond market. We simultaneously sold off the convertible bonds of tech companies underwritten by Goldman Sachs through three offshore accounts, driving the price down below the exercise price. Their proprietary trading desk couldn't stop the losses in time and lost nearly 800 million." Sophia turned to another page. "In addition, there's their investment in Visionox—Visionox's stock price has fallen by almost 70% since we started shorting it. Goldman Sachs previously held about 9% of Visionox's shares through three funds."
"After the police file a case regarding that 'unique idea' case, the stock price will continue to fall." Ling Yun returned to his desk and sat down. "Goldman Sachs' investments in the Asian market will likely suffer at least another billion in losses this time."
Sophia put the report away. "Mr. Ling, there's one more thing. Morgan—" She paused, "Winston called me last night."
"What did he say?"
"He was very polite. He said he wanted to meet you, and you could choose the time and place."
Ling Yun leaned back in his chair, his fingers slowly tapping the armrest. A breeze picked up outside, making the glass rattle.
"Winston is smarter than Anderson," Ling Yun said. "Anderson is the knife, Winston is the water. You can block a knife attack, but you can't stop water from seeping in."
Should we say yes or no?
"Let it sit for a week," Ling Yun thought for a moment. "Let him wait. Wait until the Yi Xiang case goes to trial, until Gu Gordon's recording is submitted to the relevant national departments. Wait until everyone sees what happens when you go against Xinghuo. Then we can talk to him."
Sophia nodded and began tidying up the documents on the table. She handed over the last document, "This is my complete report on this counterattack. It includes how we found out Goldman Sachs's heavily invested portfolio, how we calculated their leverage ratio, and how we chose the timing. Take a look, and if there are no problems, I suggest you archive it."
Ling Yun took the report but didn't flip through it. He looked at Sophia, "Sophia, do you know what finance means to me?"
Sofia stopped what she was doing.
"It's a tool," Ling Yun answered himself. "Finance is a tool. My battlefield is in the real world—on the chip production line, in the code of the operating system, on the touch screen of the StarPhone." He stood up. "But anyone who tries to bite me in the financial market, I'll make them remember the pain. The pain they'll remember for a lifetime."
Sophia smiled. "Mr. Ling, Anderson will definitely remember this."
"That's not enough." Ling Yun walked to the window. "Once the case against the eccentric is decided, Goldman Sachs will scale back its operations across Asia. That's when they'll truly understand that some opponents can't be killed with money."
At this moment, Zhao Hu knocked on the door and came in. "President Ling, Li Mo is here. He's waiting outside."
"Let him in."
Li Mo pushed open the door and came in, carrying a plastic bag. The bag had the Xinghuo Canteen logo printed on it.
"Brother Ling, have you had lunch yet? The cafeteria has braised pork today, I brought you some."
Ling Yun paused, glancing at the clock on the wall—4:30 PM. He shook his head. "I forgot."
Li Mo placed the lunchbox on the table and opened it, the aroma of braised pork wafting out. "I knew it. You've been in a meeting since this morning, and nobody dared to call you."
Sofia stood up. "I'll go rest now. I have to fly back to New York tonight."
Ling Yun nodded. "Thank you for your hard work. Call me when you get to New York."
Sofia walked to the door and glanced back—Ling Yun was picking up a piece of meat with his chopsticks, and Li Mo was sitting next to him, taking out a box of white rice and a box of vegetables from a plastic bag.
She gently closed the door.
The corridor was quiet, with only the distant buzzing of a fax machine.
Sofia walked to the elevator, took a mint out of her bag, and put it in her mouth. The elevator mirror reflected her face; the dark circles under her eyes hadn't faded, but there was a slight smile at the corner of her mouth.
As the elevator doors opened, she took out her phone and sent a text message to her assistant: "Rebooked flight, flying to New York tonight. Meeting with Goldman Sachs' Anderson scheduled for tomorrow morning at 8 AM."
She pressed send and stepped into the elevator. Before the doors closed, she heard Li Mo's voice coming from Ling Yun's office: "Brother Ling, this meat's getting cold. Should we have the cafeteria heat it up?"
That night, in Manhattan, New York.
The conference room in Goldman Sachs headquarters was brightly lit. Anderson sat at one end of a long table, a thick stack of documents spread out in front of him, but he wasn't looking at them.
Sitting opposite me was Goldman Sachs' Global Risk Director, an elderly man with gray hair and gold-rimmed glasses. He was flipping through a document slowly, reading each page twice.
"Steve, do you know how many years I've been in this position?" the old man finally spoke.
Anderson did not answer.
"Eight years. In those eight years, I've seen traders' models go wrong, I've seen counterparties default, and I've seen LTCM almost drag down the entire Wall Street back then." The old man took off his glasses and wiped them. "But I've never seen a loss of three billion without any violation of risk control regulations."
"You mean—"
"I mean, this wasn't an accident." The old man put on his glasses. "Someone planned this. Your opponent calculated it more accurately and acted faster than you."
Anderson's fingers slowly curled up on the table, forming a fist.
"Who?"
The old man glanced at him. "You know who it is."
A long silence filled the meeting room. Outside the window, the New York cityscape shone brightly, but those lights had nothing to do with them anymore.
"There's one more problem," the old man stood up, "You'll have to explain this to the board tomorrow. They'll definitely ask you—what are your plans regarding this competitor?"
Anderson didn't answer. The old man's footsteps faded into the distance, and the conference room door closed softly. Only Anderson remained, along with the unfinished stack of documents on the table.