Lei Jun refused to take the bait. Why did they want him to provide a guarantee? He had no interest in doing nothing but guarantee business. Especially after learning Chen Yuanguang and Lin Jia's cards, how could he possibly settle for earning only the meager fees from such easy money?
Once any internet company reached a certain scale, it would inevitably venture into financial services. Many second-tier internet companies even ran financial businesses that outperformed their core operations. For example, 360 Finance's revenue and profits had surpassed those of 360 itself as early as 2019.
Xiaomi's financial business was an even bigger behemoth. While other internet companies were still running traffic-driven personal lending businesses, Xiaomi Finance, under Xiaomi, had already begun aggressively acquiring licenses in numerous fields, including third-party payments, banking, insurance, financing guarantees, commercial factoring, and more.
Xiaomi Finance operated across the board. As long as a financial business made money, it did it.
Lei Jun's proposal was for them to borrow directly from Xinwang Bank, with Tiantian Technology providing the guarantee. In addition, they wanted a portion of the investment stake. Lei Jun's package proposal sought returns of more than 20 percent.
Xiaomi's financial businesses were all housed under Tiantian Technology. This included Tiantian Bank, the second virtual bank established in Hong Kong by Tiantian. If Tiantian Bank had been authorized to operate on the mainland, Lei Jun would have wanted to borrow directly from it.
Lin Jia did not want to waste time. Twenty percent it was. Rather than haggle with Lei Jun over those few points of return, it was better to get the matter settled as soon as possible. The two sides broadly agreed on the terms within two days.
The bigger the deal, the faster it was negotiated. The smaller the deal, the more likely both sides were to nitpick, because the bosses behind major deals could make decisions directly and did not care too much about tactical gains and losses.
When China took on Indonesia's Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway, a project with a total investment of 5.5 billion dollars, the decision had been made in a week.
Having absorbed such lessons through constant exposure, Lin Jia was the same. It would have been a huge loss if quibbling over those few points caused Goose Factory to reject the deal.
In the end, Lin Jia's film and television investment company secured a loan of 250 million from Xinwang Bank at a fixed funding cost of over 20 percent.
They then completed the transaction with Goose Factory without a hitch.
Luckily, the only thing Jenny did right was not packaging and selling the sequel IP for Kuala Lumpur Affairs along with it. We still hold the priority rights to adapt the follow-up IP.
That was a blessing amid misfortune, Mark thought as he read his subordinate's summary report on the matter.
"How do you know I didn't deliberately leave it for them?" Lin Jia answered when Chen Yuanguang asked why she had not bought the follow-up rights this time.
Chen Yuanguang was puzzled. "Why deliberately leave it for them? The success of Kuala Lumpur Affairs 2 is practically guaranteed. The value of this series' IP should rise accordingly."
Lin Jia said, "In military strategy, this is called leaving one side open when surrounding on three sides. Goose Factory has enormous traffic and influence. No matter what we do later, there will be room for cooperation, so there's no need to make enemies of them completely.
"Besides, if we took over all of Kuala Lumpur Affairs in one go this time, there might be some trap they had left unfilled. If that delayed the film's release during the New Year holiday season, we would be the ones taking the loss.
"By leaving the development of the follow-up IP to them and giving them hope, the higher this film's box office becomes, the more valuable the IP in their hands will be. They might even help promote the film for us.
"And there's another crucial point. The value of Kuala Lumpur Affairs' IP is built on you. That has become even more obvious after this nationwide incident. Goose Factory will understand that. It will be easy for us to negotiate a larger investment share in the future."
After Lin Jia patiently laid out the pros and cons for Chen Yuanguang, he gained an entirely new understanding of her business acumen. He had known before that her family was wealthy, but that had only been an intuitive impression, a material perception.
He had never really felt that she was particularly capable. They were both at school, taking public electives together. Maybe she was better at research analysis, while he was better at data analysis. Chen Yuanguang had felt there was no fundamental difference between them.
Even when they went out in daily life, Lin Jia paid special attention to things like a store's table turnover rate, business model, and payback period. She often discussed such matters with Chen Yuanguang while they ate, and he had thought she was merely talking theory.
Only after these two rounds of business negotiations and operations did Chen Yuanguang realize how sharp her business instincts were. For someone so young to possess such keen instincts, it could only have come from lifelong exposure, not from clawing her way up through experience.
And even if someone had built themselves up through hard struggle, it would take many years to understand that one could not swallow up all the profits and had to leave enough profit for upstream and downstream partners.
It was like Japan registering all the patents in Hydrogen Energy, to the point where China and America, the largest producer and consumer, simply refused to play along.
Japan had wanted to take all the profits for itself, causing others to stop dealing with it altogether. No matter how many patents it held, they were useless.
From a macro perspective, America had established the global economic order by being willing to share profits with its junior partners. It had maintained actual control over Europe for so many years by feeding it bite by bite through the Marshall Plan.
The Gates Foundation's offer of an annual salary in the millions of dollars to recruit Chen Yuanguang came to an end. The whole incident once again refreshed netizens' understanding of just how impressive Chen Yuanguang was. Chief Scientist—just hearing that title sounded incredible.
The compensation truly matched the title of Chief Scientist. Netizens could not help marveling that the lives of extraordinary people were like having cheats enabled.
As for the transaction with Goose Factory, it remained hidden beneath the surface and was not publicized with great fanfare.
Even after the film was released, Goose Factory would still be listed as the producer. Only the investment returns had been transferred; the producer credits would remain unchanged.
Meanwhile, as the year drew to a close, winter arrived. Viruses spread faster in winter, and they mutated faster as well. Different strains were emerging in various places.
"Light, I sent you the sequencing results for the Alpha strain discovered in England in September. Every mutation site was within the range predicted by your model.
"The sequencing results for the Beta strain newly discovered in South Africa are out as well. Its mutation sites are also within your predicted range.
"Pfizer and Bayer have both begun fully launching Broad-spectrum Vaccine clinical trials based on your research findings. They have great confidence in the Broad-spectrum Vaccine." Levitt sounded excited over the phone. The Beta strain discovered in South Africa had once again validated the model, letting him see hope for an end to the virus.
For people like them, contributing something to humanity could be considered a higher-level need. The dopamine released after satisfying it was incomparable to anything else.
On top of that, the spread of the virus had caused too many elderly colleagues around Levitt to suffer.
He was getting old himself. If the virus continued spreading, he did not think he could withstand Long COVID.
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