Egypt—at last, the Suez Canal had reached its critical moment. After nine long years of construction, it was finally nearing completion.
This time, work had not stopped midway, nor had there been any shortage of labor. France and Austria had jointly built the grand canal. Not only had the British failed to sabotage it, but their Egyptian cotton-growing plan had also come to nothing.
The reason construction had taken so long was simple: the canal's designed depth was four meters deeper than that of the Suez Canal in the original timeline.
Later, during actual construction, the engineers dispatched by Austria insisted on leaving no room for error and lowered it another two meters.
With the depth increased, the width naturally had to increase accordingly, and the scale of the project grew with it. In an age lacking machinery, the additional volume of earthworks was no minor undertaking.
As the workload increased, so did construction costs. In the original timeline, after many twists and turns, the Suez Canal had finally opened at a cost of 18.6 million pounds. Now, before it had even opened, costs had already reached 37.7 million pounds.
The ever-rising costs sent Suez Canal shares tumbling all the way down, and many doubted whether the canal could ever recoup its investment.
This happened to benefit Franz. Whenever someone dumped shares, he took them off their hands. He could not lose money anyway; profitability was merely a matter of time.
It was precisely because he was there to catch the falling knife that Suez Canal shares had not fallen to cabbage prices. Of course, dropping below the issue price had been unavoidable.
After two additional share offerings, seeing the shares remain sluggish as if no one wanted them, the canal company directly mortgaged the canal's ownership rights to borrow