Chapter 68 Tie Ben's Death and Jianlong's Life

Under the thunderstorm, Tieben could not continue, and became a victim of a vigorous macro-control movement.When it was strictly ordered to suspend work, the investment of bank loan funds had reached 2.6 billion yuan. In this sense, the iron capital was overturned, and the most financial losses were those state-owned banks that took risks. In the Tieben incident, the following phenomena are very intriguing: In industries such as iron and steel, when private capital was strictly ordered to stop, state-owned and international capital made great strides.At the same time as the Ironben Incident, Baosteel entered into a joint venture with Arcelor, the largest steel company in the world at that time, and Nippon Steel, the second largest company, to start construction of the 1,800mm cold-rolling project. Signed a long-term order agreement to purchase 7 million tons of iron ore per year.Xie Qihua, president and chairman of the company, announced that Baosteel intends to spend 50 billion to 60 billion yuan before 2010 to expand production from 20 million tons to 30 million tons, increasing production capacity by 50%.This news shocked the global steel industry.

Immediately afterwards, Wuhan Iron and Steel Group, the fourth largest iron and steel enterprise in China, stated that several large-scale projects of Wuhan Iron and Steel have been approved by the National Development and Reform Commission, and the total investment will exceed 20 billion yuan.Other large state-owned iron and steel enterprises have also launched new projects: Benxi Iron and Steel Group cooperated with Posco to launch the cold-rolled plate project; The hot-dip galvanized sheet project with an annual output of 400,000 tons; Tangshan Iron and Steel Group, Maanshan Iron and Steel Group and BHP Billiton, the world's largest mineral resources company, respectively signed an order agreement for 3 million tons of iron ore.

The pace of investment by multinational steel companies in China does not seem to be stagnant either.Just three days after Dai Guofang was detained, in Suzhou Industrial Park, which is only 105 kilometers away from Changzhou, the Australian BlueScope Steel Company held a lively groundbreaking ceremony for a steel project with an investment of 280 million Australian dollars (about 1.7 billion yuan).The president of the company, Mao Simin, said: "Everything went well beyond expectations. We got the business license in less than a month." The Suzhou Industrial Park revealed that BlueScope's project only took 7 days from the submission of application materials to the issuance of the business license. working days.

Some media commented that for a project of 1.7 billion yuan, the business license can be obtained within 7 days, which is simply a fantasy for investors in most parts of the country.Because according to the current national regulations, projects with an investment of 50 million to 200 million yuan must be approved by the National Development and Reform Commission, and projects with an investment of more than 200 million yuan must be submitted to the State Council for approval.Moreover, iron and steel investment is the top priority of macro-control, and the Tieben incident is just around the corner. BlueScope's rapid project approval is really amazing.Xu Shousong, a reporter from Xinhua News Agency, wrote with great emotion in the book "Tieben Investigation": "In the same industry, at the same time, in the same province, why are the fates of two steel companies, Tieben and BlueScope, one local and one foreign, separated by life and death? Heavy door? Some people are singing and dancing inside the door, while others are singing and crying outside the door.”

From the industry data of the whole year, it can also let people see the real side.In the few months after Tieben was severely punished, the national steel production seemed to be temporarily under control, but it has accelerated month by month since June, and the daily production level has been hitting a record since July, and even more so in October. The daily output exceeded 800,000 tons, reaching 804,400 tons.In the first 10 months, the cumulative production of steel products nationwide was 272 million tons, an increase of 24.12% over the same period of the previous year. In 2005, steel output continued to grow on the track of rapid growth. The national production of steel was 371 million tons, a year-on-year increase of 24.1%.What's more interesting is that in 2004, there were only two iron and steel factories in the country with a steel output exceeding 10 million tons, but by 2005, the number had soared to eight, and all of them except Shagang were large state-owned enterprises.

From the perspective of data, Tieben's "killing chickens to scare monkeys" effect has not really been achieved.Due to this case, some people called the macro-control a "overheated macro-control of private enterprises". Even among regulated private enterprises, fortunes vary widely.Ningbo Jianlong, which was ordered to stop production at the same time as Tieben, had a different life and death situation. The start-up of Ningbo Jianlong Iron and Steel Company began in April 2002, almost at the same time as Tieben.Guo Guangchang, an entrepreneur from Zhejiang Province, is just as optimistic about the future steel market as Dai Guofang. He chose Beilun Port, Ningbo, and decided to invest US$1.2 billion to build a steel factory with an annual output of 6 million tons. Guo Guangchang, born in 1967, graduated from the Philosophy Department of Fudan University and is a member of the young group of domestic private enterprises.He founded Fosun in 1992, initially as a sales and marketing agent for a real estate company in Shanghai. Two years later, Fosun launched its own real estate projects, which achieved explosive growth in the high-temperature era of Shanghai real estate.Afterwards, Fosun successively entered the fields of medicine, finance, and retail, and turned upside down in the securities market, building the famous "Fosun System" in the Chinese stock market.In the 2002 "Forbes" China Rich List, Guo Guangchang ranked ninth.What is even more eye-catching is that a series of "halos" surround his head: member of the Ninth CPPCC National Committee, representative of the Tenth National People's Congress, member of the Standing Committee of the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, "Shanghai Top Ten Outstanding Youth", Shanghai Chairman of Zhejiang Chamber of Commerce.

Fosun entered the steel industry in 2001.In July of that year, Fosun invested 350 million yuan to acquire 30% of the shares of Tangshan Jianlong; two years later, it joined forces with Nanjing Iron and Steel Group, a veteran private iron and steel company, to form Nanjing Iron and Steel United Co., Ltd., which is actually controlled by Fosun 60%, and at the same time controlled the listed company Nanjing Iron and Steel Co., Ltd., and this year, Nanjing Iron and Steel Co., Ltd. achieved a net profit of 489 million yuan.It was under the temptation of extraordinary profits that Guo Guangchang bet on Ningbo, and the Jianlong project was invested and constructed in the name of Nangang.

In February 2004, the National Development and Reform Commission and the China Banking Regulatory Commission formed a joint investigation team to enter Jianlong. In May, one month after the Tieben incident, China Central Television exposed the Jianlong incident. There were three major violations: 1. Violation of the approval process, which changed the project that should have been approved by the competent department of the State Council into a local approval; 2. 1. Start construction without the approval of the environmental protection department; 3. Short-term loans and long-term investments, converting 700 million yuan of working capital loans from the bank into fixed asset investment.Judging from these circumstances, the nature of Jianlong's violations is very similar to that of Tieben, so it is called "Tieben No. 2".When Jianlong was ordered to stop, its construction progress was similar to that of Tieben. The ironmaking blast furnace, hot rolling workshop, and wharf were basically completed, and the actual investment has reached 4.8 billion yuan.After the news of the suspension of construction of the project came out, Fosun's share price plummeted in response.At that time, Tang Wanxin's "Delong Department" had just begun to collapse, and Guo Guangchang, who was also a master of private capital operations, attracted a lot of attention. In July, some media revealed that "Fosun" was listed as "prudent lending" blacklist by relevant banks, and the capital chain was at risk of breaking at any time.

Different from Tieben, after the incident, although six cadres including the Ningbo Municipal Planning Commission and the Land and Resources Bureau were punished, no one from Jianlong and Ningbo was detained, and Guo Guangchang, the actual controller of the project, was not even detained. Due to movement restrictions, he still has room to save himself.Immediately after being investigated, Fosun announced that the company has no relationship with Ningbo Jianlong and its shareholders. In September, Guo Guangchang suddenly hinted at a Yangtze River Delta forum in Hangzhou that Jianlong still has a hidden "shadow shareholder", that is, the famous private entrepreneur and vice chairman of the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce Liu Yonghao New Hope Group.

Guo Guangchang's hint was nothing more than to constantly test the bottom line of the upper management's handling of the Jianlong incident.Judging from the later developments, what really turned the Jianlong project around was the participation of a large state-owned steel company in Zhejiang. At the same time as the construction of the Jianlong project started, Hangzhou Iron and Steel Company also began to prepare for the construction of a steel project covering an area of ​​5,400 mu in Daxie Island, Ningbo.Due to the entanglement in demolition and other issues, when the construction of the Jianlong project was more than halfway done, the Daxie project of Hangzhou Iron and Steel Co., Ltd. had not officially started.

After Jianlong ran aground, the Zhejiang Provincial Government immediately proposed the intention to integrate Jianlong and Hangzhou Iron and Steel.In this regard, Tong Yunfang, chairman of Hangzhou Iron and Steel Co., Ltd., who is in a favorable position, said, "Either hold the shares or not participate."Of course, Guo Guangchang was not reconciled to being eaten up. He made it clear at the forum in Hangzhou that the government is right to consider the development of Hangzhou Iron and Steel and Jianlong comprehensively, but the integration must be done in a reformed way, not in the old way. The problem of who is the core must be solved in the most optimized and most competitive market way.He told reporters: "State-owned enterprises can participate in shares, but private enterprises must be allowed to take control. Don't let state-owned enterprises control private enterprises in the name of macro-control." Caijing asked in a comment on this matter: "In In this negotiation between private enterprises, state-owned enterprises and the government, the former that has been found to be violating the regulations is obviously in a weak position. But the question is, does it have to be controlled by the state-owned enterprises before they can be released?" Guo Guangchang's struggle and the media's questioning proved to be ineffective. In August 2004, a piece of news spread throughout the financial circles: Hanggang and Jianlong reached a preliminary restructuring agreement, with Hanggang holding 51% of the shares and Guo Guangchang holding 49%.The opinions on the handling of the Jianlong incident were also issued as scheduled, and the State Council delegated the handling authority of Ningbo Jianlong Iron and Steel’s illegal projects to the Zhejiang Provincial Government.This means that the reorganized Jianlong project has been "legally admitted". At the beginning of 2006, the National Development and Reform Commission approved the Ningbo Jianlong Iron and Steel Project with the document "Fagai Industry [2006] No. 434".According to the approval document, the National Development and Reform Commission agrees that Hangzhou Iron and Steel Group Co., Ltd. will reorganize Ningbo Jianlong Iron and Steel Co., Ltd. in light of its own structural adjustment. Hangzhou Iron and Steel Group will act as the controlling shareholder and join other shareholders to reorganize it into "Ningbo Iron and Steel Co., Ltd." Guo Guangchang narrowly escaped death at the cost of sacrificing his controlling interest.