Chapter 34 Chapter Thirty-Four

In the 1930s, the "Seven Star Company" with Kong Xiangxi as its backer did a lot of speculative business in Shanghai.Because of his accurate intelligence and abundant funds, he turned his hand into clouds and rain in the Shanghai market, and made a lot of money.National capital is extremely disgusted with this practice of using privileges to obtain huge profits, and there is a lot of criticism in the market for a while.In order to protect their own interests, some businessmen in Shanghai reached a tacit agreement to deal with the "Seven Star Company" together. Once, the "Seven Stars Company", relying on its strong financial resources, attempted to cause a bearish trend in the price of gold, forcing gold holders in Shanghai to sell a large amount of gold, and then let them buy it.To this end, they keep shorting the gold exchange, and the price of gold is bearish on a daily basis.However, the merchants in the gold business in Shanghai were in collusion. Seeing the sharp drop in the price of gold, they refused to sell their gold. When the right opportunity came, they even bought some gold sold by the "Seven Star Company". The "Seven Star Company" did not expect that their magic weapon to influence the market would not work this time, but the short sellers had done too much, and their capital was lost. In the end, it was the Shanghai businessmen's turn to collect debts from them.Although Kong Xiangxi was the backstage of the "Seven Star Company", but the speculative business failed, it was inconvenient for him to publicly renege on the debt, so he instructed Du Yuesheng to intervene.

Du Yuesheng came forward and found many businessmen who became creditors in this gold transaction. At the party, he said threateningly: "This business, my friend is running around, I will not look at the cold shop, no matter how much the bill is, I will send it all over, and I am going to go bankrupt and pay for it." These merchants who have been up and down in Shanghai for a long time, of course understand the true meaning of Du Yuesheng's words, so they can only force a smile and say: "It's a joke. If someone else loses a gun, Mr. Du will lose his entire family and pay for it. There is no such reason in the world! According to Mr. Du's name, the account will be written off."

The money in hand was forcibly dug away, which is really painful.What makes these gold trading businessmen even more palpitating is that although they survived the short-selling wave on the gold exchange with a narrow victory, the "Seven Star Company" is making a comeback and doing bigger speculative transactions. difficult to resist.Out of this concern, they thought of a so-called clever plan, that is, to elect Du Yuesheng as the chairman of the gold industry exchange, hoping to use his face to restrain the Kong family. This kind of thinking is exactly what Du Yuesheng wanted.Du Yuesheng intervened in this trend to show his strength to both parties involved. On the one hand, he raised his status in the eyes of the four major families, and on the other hand, he flaunted his special relationship with the four major families to frighten the businessmen in Shanghai.This move really worked, and the title of "Chairman of the Gold Exchange" was added in front of the word "Du Yuesheng".

In addition to the gold industry exchange, Du Yuesheng also sought the position of chairman of China Commercial Bank after helping the central bank where Kong Xiangxi was the president and the Bank of China where Song Ziwen was the chairman to control the China Commercial Bank. China Commercial Bank was founded by Sheng Xuanhuai in November 1897. It must have such a sentence in its advertisements: "my country's first first bank". It has an old brand and great influence.After Sheng Xuanhuai's death, the bank was taken over by Fu Xiao'an. It was an important bank other than the Central Bank, China Bank, Communication Bank, and Farmer Bank controlled by the four major families.Song Ziwen and Kong Xiangxi had long wanted to get involved in the bank, but they never found a chance.

In 1935, the Kuomintang government implemented the "French Currency Policy", which stipulated that "the banknotes issued by the Central Bank, the Bank of China and the Bank of Communications shall be the legal tender". In 1936, the Agricultural Bank of China was added. The banknotes issued by these four banks will gradually be replaced by banknotes issued by these four banks, and they will be discontinued. In order to prevent banks from indiscriminately printing banknotes in exchange for "legal currency", before the announcement of the "French Currency Policy", the Kuomintang government investigated the number of banknotes issued by 12 banks that had the right to issue banknotes.Among them, the banknotes issued by China Commercial Bank were 34.3 million yuan.After grasping this situation, the central government, the China Bank, and the Bank of Communications secretly collected a large amount of banknotes from the China Commercial Bank, and suddenly went to the bank to cash them.Due to an accident, Fu Xiaoan saw the skyrocketing land price in Shanghai and was building a "China Commercial Building" on Henan Road at a cost of 10 million yuan.The Kuomintang government denounced the bank for "preparing for non-compliance with the regulations." In the name of maintaining finance, it proposed to join the official shares and appoint directors or chairman of the board to fully control China Commercial Bank.

Fu Xiaoan was not willing to admit defeat, and tried her best to obstruct it.The Kuomintang government seized the braids of his past contacts with the Beiyang warlords, added him a hat of conspiracy to harm the country, and ordered him to be wanted and investigated.Frightened, Fu Xiaoan fled to Dalian, which was under the control of Japanese imperialism, to hide. Once Fu Xiaoan left, China Commercial Bank fell into chaos. If it went bankrupt, it would inevitably cause fluctuations in Shanghai's financial market.Song Ziwen and Kong Xiangxi intended to control the bank and did not want it to close down.But Fu Xiaoan was frightened by the authorities, and the Kuomintang government had publicly issued an arrest warrant for him, so it was inconvenient to ask Fu Xiaoan to return to Shanghai, so the matter was handed over to Du Yuesheng.

Du Yuesheng was happy to be a good person, and immediately asked someone to bring a letter to Fu Xiaoan: "Mr., please go back to Shanghai to settle the accounts of China Commercial Bank. The sky is falling, and someone from Du will support it." Fu Xiaoan fled in panic, which was an expedient measure. Seeing that Du Yuesheng came forward as a guarantee, he decided to follow the trend and return to Shanghai.He said to the person who carried the letter: "Mr. Du is really very human. He shoulders the moral responsibility with iron shoulders. I decided to go back to Shanghai, and I will do whatever I can."

His words killed two birds with one stone. On the one hand, he said that he came back to Shanghai to save Du Yuesheng's face, and on the other hand, by praising Du Yuesheng, he emphasized that Du must be responsible for his wealth and life.The words are beautiful and meaningful, and they can be described as old and treacherous. After Fu Xiaoan returned to Shanghai, he put together all kinds of things and auctioned off the unfinished "China Commerce Building" with an investment of tens of millions of yuan at a price of more than 3 million yuan, barely paying off the debt.However, after being hit by this blow, China Commercial Bank was dying and unable to recover.Kong Xiangxi, Song Ziwen and others felt that the time had come, so they instructed Du Yuesheng to come forward to ask the Central Bank for support on behalf of China Commercial Bank.After that, the central bank put a large amount of "official shares" into China Commercial Bank in the name of "relief", and transferred Gu Yigu, the director of the central bank's business, to China Commercial Bank as the general manager.Du Yuesheng served as the chairman of China Commercial Bank, so of course his status in the financial world is not comparable to that of the past.

Relying on the special relationship with bureaucratic capital, Du Yuesheng also successively served as director of China Bank and Bank of Communications, chairman of Pudong Bank, Guoxin Bank, and director of Shanghai Banking Association.Although the title of chairman of the Banking Association has not been attributed to him, he has finally become a figure who can make waves in the financial world.