I

"Please forgive me for interrupting you, Mr. Lin Qi. Do you mean that we'll only make investments and do nothing else?"

The person asking was a fairly well-known wealthy man with personal assets exceeding twenty million Federal Sols. In the Federation, that made him a remarkably wealthy tycoon.

He had attended the Spring Appreciation Conference for four years. Every year, he contributed one million to take part in it. It was an extremely rare opportunity for high-end business networking.

Even if he couldn't reach any agreements at the Spring Appreciation Conference, at the very least, it could make him famous throughout the Federation.

Fame meant social status and influence, and both of those could be quickly converted into cash.

If a poor man took a house worth one hundred thousand dollars to the bank for a loan, the bank could probably approve only forty to sixty thousand dollars.

Aside from the normal need to avoid losses caused by inflated market prices, the bank itself also had profit to pursue.

That was the strangest part. The banks were clearly making money like crazy, yet many people believed they were "public welfare institutions" that didn't make profits.

All one could say was that bankers were extremely good at packaging themselves—so good that nobody had noticed this.

But if a wealthy man with social status and fame, even one who wasn't actually rich, took a property worth one hundred thousand dollars to the bank for a loan,

the bank might well grant him a loan of sixty to eighty thousand dollars. Aside from the normal risk avoidance, the bank might not even need to make money.

Because cooperating with more wealthy people and providing more wealthy people with all kinds of services was how banks made their money.

The same thing could sell