Top of the Great Era

Chapter 1834 Employment is a vote
On December 12, the negotiation was concluded!

Ziweixing International and Lufthansa have reached an agreement to complete the transaction of its IT infrastructure department.

There are mainly three terms.

12.5. The transaction price is US$5 billion, paid in cash.It is divided into 1 installments, the first installment is 2.5 million US dollars before this month, and the remaining 10 billion US dollars will be paid in 4 installments in the next two years, 2.5 million US dollars will be paid every six months.

Second, large-scale layoffs are not allowed.

Third, all infrastructure services required by Lufthansa are outsourced to Ziweixing International for a period of 5 years.

After the contract is signed, the news can be announced on the same day, and then it will be put into operation immediately. It will pass the approval of the relevant German authorities before the 20th, and the approval of the European Union before this month.

That night, Lufthansa held a low-key but grand reception.

I feel that Wolfgang Maierhuber, the chairman of Lufthansa Airlines, is happier than Zhou Buqi. Holding a beer, he looks proud, not at all like an old man in his sixties.

Zhou Buqi also complained in his heart.

Similar social gatherings in other places are basically drinking red wine. These Germans are really weird. Everyone drinks beer together, as if beer is their national image.

However, in terms of business cooperation, Zhou Buqi has always been very sincere, and he also has a kind of helpful quality. "This cooperation, Lufthansa's financial difficulties should be able to solve it?"

Now that the deal has been concluded, Mr. Maierhuber doesn't need to hide too much. To tell the truth: "It is expected to save 7000 million US dollars in expenses every year."

Zhou Buqi glanced at him, "Is it only for emergency?"

Maierhuber was a little silent. It is not easy to talk about this topic. Leaking news will affect the company's stock price and the confidence of employees.

Zhou Buqi said very sincerely: "The times have changed. In the past [-] to [-] years, the globalized economy has not developed, information is blocked, and the economy is blocked. Lufthansa's model can still be implemented. It is not working now. In In the face of an increasingly open market economy and global competition, the nature of state-owned enterprises is doomed to Lufthansa will encounter more and more crises in the future."

Maier Huber deeply agrees, "In the past, airlines invested too much, and Europe was basically dominated by state-owned enterprises. But in the past ten years, the market economy has developed too fast, and the business model of the aviation industry has also changed. From The subscription system has changed to a lease system, so that there are more and more private aviation.”

In the aviation industry in the early years, airlines bought aircraft from aircraft manufacturers. For example, ordering 200 or 300 aircraft at one time cost tens of billions of dollars.

Private capital simply cannot afford such a large amount of money.

Therefore, the airlines in Europe in the early years were basically state-owned enterprises, and the state paid for the aircraft.

However, with the development of the times, the business model has also changed.Airlines don't need to spend tens of billions of dollars to buy planes, but learn from the American way and play the leasing system.

That is, the airline leases the aircraft from the aircraft intermediary and gives a certain lease fee and revenue share.

In this way, airlines have changed from super asset-heavy to light and middle-weight companies, and more and more private aviation companies have emerged.Then, the national airlines on the European side began to close down one after another.

In fact, airlines and aircraft leasing intermediary companies each get what they need, and it is a fusion of capital and business.

Airlines have expertise, and aircraft leasing companies have deep pockets.The two sides hit it off, and the money was shared proportionally.Li Chaoren of the Hong Kong government discovered that this is an excellent business, so he bought an aircraft leasing company and acquired dozens of aircraft for this kind of intermediary business.

You don’t have to do anything, just buy a batch of planes and lease them to the airlines, and you can get a share of the money every year and “collect taxes” steadily.

Relying on this new business model, private aviation and state-owned aviation have the opportunity to compete on the same stage, and state-owned aviation has been severely squeezed.Even a super giant like Lufthansa can't stand it anymore, they are squeezed by private low-cost airlines and can't survive.

Zhou Buqi's foresight did not cover the situation of the European aviation industry in the next few years, but his analysis based on the principles of market economy was not wrong.

This time, Lufthansa sold its IT infrastructure department, which indeed alleviated the short-term crisis, but it was actually a temporary solution rather than a permanent cure.

State-owned enterprises cannot compete with the essential attributes of private enterprises, which will lead to the decline of Lufthansa over time.To keep selling assets to survive, you need to keep applying to the German government for billions of euros in relief funds.

Zhou Buqi said: "If Lufthansa wants to completely solve the market dilemma, it must restructure. In our country, there used to be a company called Jianlibao, which made beverages. Its market share was higher than that of Coca-Cola, but it was a state-owned enterprise. The senior executives were restructured, but they were rejected because of the alleged loss of state-owned assets. After a few years, the company collapsed."

Maierhuber gave him a deep look, "Mr. Zhou, we are more experienced than you in the restructuring of state-owned enterprises!"

"Right!"

Zhou Buqi laughed.

The European side also advocated the state-owned system for decades, but soon found out that it was wrong, and began to quickly turn around.Before the restructuring of state-owned enterprises in China in the 90s, the first thing they did was to send a team to Germany to study, and then invited a group of German experts to go back to impart experience.

Maierhuber pondered: "The problem facing Lufthansa is neither market competition nor the loss of state-owned assets. These are not the key. The core is the employees, and the employees who rely on Lufthansa's huge industrial chain."

Zhou Buqi was taught, "Well, stable employment is the most important thing."

"That's right." Maierhuber nodded, "I've been to your country several times, the way you treat workers... If you want to start a business in Europe, the core element is not how much value you create, nor Which countries you have conflicts with and which politicians you have disagreements with depends on how many stable jobs Europe can create around your industry."

Zhou Buqi made it clear, "Employment is votes."

Maierhuber smiled, "I know you are worried about the future of Lufthansa. It is completely unnecessary, because you cannot look at such a company from the perspective of the market. The industrial chain surrounding the Lufthansa Group covers millions of people in Germany. It is impossible for Lufthansa to fail if there is no employment. To do more is to integrate and continue to live like British Airways and West Air.”

Zhou Buqi now understands why the European economy has such a big problem.

The market has been hijacked by votes.

From a market point of view, low-end and inefficient state-owned enterprises like Lufthansa should be dismantled as soon as possible, sold if they can be sold, and given away for free if they can’t be sold, and hand over assets and resources to competent people for management.

Only in this way can we create the greatest value in society.

But in this way, the unemployment rate is likely to rise sharply in a short period of time, and politicians cannot afford the price of reform.They reformed, they stepped down, and they will only receive the fruits of reform for subsequent successors.

Take Britain for example. After she came to power, Mrs. Thatcher took a very strong stance and promoted the reform of state-owned enterprises in the UK. Basically, they were half sold and half given away, and all were handed over to private capital.The British economy has recovered rapidly, and productivity and creativity have been stimulated again.But when Mrs. Thatcher died, the whole country of Britain rejoiced, wishing that she died too late.

From this point of view, if Ziweixing International wants to firmly grasp the European market, it should start from this perspective.

To provide employment is to win votes, and you can kidnap the whole of Europe.

The Internet is asset-light, which is definitely not possible. It still depends on large-scale infrastructure, such as cloud data centers, such as the optical fiber business that Curry is so relieved.

The acquisition of Lufthansa's IT infrastructure department really has a lot of added value.

(End of this chapter)