Traveling through the sword to engage in military industry.

"Mr. Lu Qian, are you sure you want to use your assets as collateral to borrow 2000 million pounds?" As a key account service manager, Pierre was a little surprised by Lu Qian's sudden move.

However, this is the freedom of the big customer. As the person in charge, he only needs to fulfill his obligation to inform.

"Yes, Mr. Pierre, I am sure that the mortgage loan of 2000 million pounds should be no problem considering the quality of my assets, right?" Lu Qian asked with a smile.

His assets are worth at least 5000 million pounds, including a materials company that is a leader in its sub-segment. Since it is not listed, the current market sales valuation method is actually much lower, because the market sales valuation method does not recognize the growth rate, but only recognizes the current sales level and market gross profit margin, and generally gives a valuation of 2-3 times. This method is not a problem for mortgage companies, which are traditional industries, because sales are relatively stable and deviations are generally small.

But for new products with high technological content, this method is somewhat distorted.

However, Lu Qian did not want to exhaust all the resources. To him, the difference between 2000 million and 2500 million was not that big. He still adhered to a prudent strategy and raised funds with risks that he could afford.

The review on Pierre's side was very quick. After all, Lu Qian's company had an account in this bank, and its annual revenue flow was clearly visible. His credit was that of a top-quality VVIP customer, so he got this batch of pound loans without any setbacks.

This is not the end yet. In this time and space, there is no mature currency futures market. Lu Qian needs to take out this 2000 million pounds of funds and transfer it to the bank's investment banking department as collateral. Then agree to Lu Qian's request to borrow pounds with a 10x leverage, and then convert it into US dollars and keep it in the investment banking department. If there is an exchange rate change between the two, for example, the official price is now 1 pound to 2.8 US dollars, and then the exchange fee is 10%, regardless of other profits and losses, the investment banking department will first receive pounds in fees!
Then there is the 2% annual interest rate. Even if it is converted on a monthly basis, it is per thousand per month. The million yuan in handling fees and interest on fund lending is still a considerable income even after discounts for VVIP customers. The investment banking department will obviously not prevent such a large customer from raising funds to take advantage of the interest rate difference.

Although this original currency transaction model is somewhat complicated to describe, involving a process of secured lending of a currency and a foreign exchange deposit, it is basically beyond the reach of ordinary people. However, for large investors with capital in the tens of millions, investment banks have set up special departments with practicing managers to handle it.

In this primitive currency futures trading, if the buyer misjudges the direction, he may lose everything, but if he gets it right, he can make a lot of money.

Now that the Canal War has begun, although most people firmly believe that John Bull and the Gallic Rooster will be able to defeat the Pharaoh after joining forces, the long and short battles between the pound and the pound in the currency market do not seem to be that intense. An obvious truth is that as long as John Bull can still control the canal, the pound will not collapse. In this case, short selling is obviously very risky.

Many people now feel that having two of the Big Five join forces to beat up a newly established colonial country is like beating a child.

Soon, the little brother who led the charge pushed back the Pharaoh's army on one side of the canal. John Bull and the Gallic Rooster took back control of the canal and bombed the Pharaoh's strategic points. The Pharaoh's army was defeated, but everything went quite smoothly.

What is not going well is the diplomacy. The two sides have not been able to come up with an agreement that is beneficial to them. Instead, they have called on them to withdraw their troops! Even the leader did not help, but stood up and sang the opposite tune again and again!

This was a bit uncomfortable. Although they did not need the military support of the leader, they still had no problem winning with their current strength. After all, this was a country that had just gained independence and did not have any heavy weapons. Although they had bought some tanks from the big goose to form a barely acceptable ground armored force, they proved to be useless on the Sinai battlefield.

But for the general public in the world of Bright Sword, the twists and turns here are simply incomprehensible!
This allowed Lu Qian and dozens of other seeds of the Qianlong Project to borrow British pounds and start short selling in the financial markets of several major European countries.

Although not everyone has the financial strength of Lu Qian, each of these dozens of seeds of the Qianlong Project has at least shorted tens of millions of pounds of currency targets! In total, their shorting of pounds exceeded 10 billion!
As a core player in European finance, the Rothschild family was the first to discover the clues.

At a family meeting in the fashion capital.

"We have seen a lot of short selling of the pound in recent large transactions from Amsterdam to London, Lisbon and investment banks such as BNP Paribas. Although we do not have accurate statistics on the quantity, the amount is huge, reaching more than hundreds of millions of pounds." Anthony Rothschild said with a heavy face.

"We have to stop shorting the pound, otherwise we will suffer heavy losses if there is any change."

Currency option trading is actually a zero-sum game. If someone makes money, someone else will lose money. The Rothschild family holds a major stake in these banks. Once the short-selling speculators succeed, they, as the underwriters of the transaction, will bear the losses.

"Anthony, perhaps we should transfer these transaction prices out for hedging. Judging from the current situation, perhaps these speculators have their own unique sources of information. Do you think their information also comes from the mysterious University of Tokyo?" Joseph Rothschild from Portugal suggested cautiously.

Anthony's trip to the East was certainly no secret to the family leaders.

So, although there were still some doubts within the Rothschild family about the outcome of the Canal War, several key decision-makers were already preparing for this terrible outcome.

The acquisition of RIO Mining is only part of their preventive measures.

Now that such large-scale currency speculation transactions have suddenly appeared in the financial field, how could the Ross family, an ancient family that got its start in finance, not be vigilant!

Historically, they made their fortunes by reacting quickly to wars and making profits by predicting and buying and selling war bonds.

Even though the figure of 10 billion pounds may not seem large in the main world today, that is compared to the hundreds of billions and trillions of dollars after the currency flooding in the main world. At this stage in the world of Bright Sword, John Bull's current total foreign exchange reserves include only 20 billion US dollars!
That is to say, the amount of US dollars exchanged for short selling of British pounds has now exceeded John Bull’s foreign exchange reserves!
Such a large number of transactions, even in financial markets in different countries, immediately alerted the Rothschild family. You have to know that this is not the era of options trading in the main world foreign exchange market where daily trading volume is in the tens of billions or hundreds of billions.

Therefore, even if it is dispersed into such a wide range of market transactions among national banks and investment banks, the transaction amount of simultaneous hedging of short selling of US dollars during this period is far less than that of short selling of British pounds.

"I second the motion. In this transaction, we just need to earn our transaction fees. As for the market risks, we need to transfer them out. I suggest that we immediately start the process of exchanging the reserved pounds for the corresponding amount of U.S. dollars." Catherine Rothschild, the only female director of the family council, agreed.

John Bull and the Gallic coalition had no problems on the battlefield. They fought as strong as ever, and with casualties only in double digits, they had already wiped out hundreds or thousands of the enemy's armed personnel and captured tens of thousands of people!
This battle was still an asymmetric one in terms of equipment, and the Ross Family Council had no objection to winning on the battlefield.

But after the fight started, their leader, Rogue Eagle, behaved extremely strangely. Not only did he not stand up to support, but he didn't even show a neutral attitude. He just suppressed John Bull and Gallic Rooster and forced them to withdraw as soon as possible!
The official representatives of the Fog City hold 44% of the rights to the Suez Canal, and the remaining 56% are investors of all sizes on the Gallic side. The Rothschild family is one of the important investors on the Gallic side.

It is a canal that generates a huge revenue of 100 million US dollars a year. Not only does it represent a lot of real benefits, it is also the most core element that demonstrates the huge control of John Bull and Gallic Rooster in the Middle East!
"I agree to transfer the risk of currency transactions. Under the current conditions, if we misjudge the exchange rate difference between the two currencies, we will undoubtedly find it difficult to bear such a result." William Rothschild also agreed.

It is of course nice to eat alone and be full, but if you burst your stomach, it will not be worth it. As the most important private capital force in Europe, the Rothschild family will certainly not bear the consequences of the crisis on their own.

Because in this wave of short-selling in the financial market, the Rothschild family didn't even find an opponent.

The actions of the Capet family and Barclays are now even more eye-catching. They have now carried out currency hedging operations on their assets. In this way, if we look at the European continent as a whole, a short position of billions of pounds has been formed!

With such a scale, the Rothschild family naturally dared not neglect it.

Therefore, at the family meeting, several key persons in charge quickly reached a consensus that these huge currency transactions must be hedged.

The Yandu of the East.

Ren Zhong did not take this small "speculative opportunity" seriously.

Therefore, even when the current trading information was fed back from several major trading markets in Europe, Ren Zhong did not respond.

What he is now concerned about is the birth of the first aviation turbofan engine.

In the main world, the company that developed the world's first practical turbofan engine, the RB.80 "Conway", was John Bull's Rolls-Royce! They made a great historical contribution to the human aviation history of Blue Star, and since then Blue Star Aviation has entered the turbofan era.

However, unlike the tycoon Hawks during the Cold War who were never short of money but only afraid that their products were not good enough, the development process of the RB.80 Conway was full of twists and turns, and it was obvious that the British Empire was on the decline. The RB.80 Conway was originally planned to be equipped with the "Warrior" Mk.2 bomber. As early as January 1950, Rolls-Royce completed the design of the Conway RCo.1, but the improvement plan for the Warrior bomber was cancelled and this engine was shelved.

Later, the Royal Air Force launched a project to develop the V-1000 large jet strategic transport aircraft. Rolls-Royce developed the RCo.2 based on the Conway RCo.5. As a result, around 1956, the Royal Air Force once again canceled the V-1000 plan!

When Rolls-Royce heard that the project was cancelled again, their heads were buzzing and they were at a loss. After some efforts, they pushed the Royal Air Force to re-establish the project and decided to use this turbofan engine to improve the Victor bomber. Based on this plan, Rolls-Royce developed the RCo.8 with greater thrust. This time they finally succeeded, but due to funding issues, the number of installations was quite limited, and this top-level aircraft engine in the world at that time did not have much use.

However, the real success of the RB.80 Conway was a breakthrough in the North American civil aviation market. In 1960, TCA Airlines of the Maple Leaf Country proposed to purchase Boeing 80s or Douglas DC-707s equipped with RB.8 "Conway" because they found that such Boeing 707s were faster and consumed less fuel, which was perfect for aviation. With this unexpected boost, the Boeing 80-707 equipped with RB.420 Conway ushered in the turbofan era for civil aviation.

However, North America's keen aviation engine competitors were not idle either. The breakthrough application of turbofan engines by Boeing and Douglas allowed everyone to see the development trend of future aviation engines. This gave General Dynamics and Pratt & Whitney a huge demonstration. They immediately expressed a strong interest in turbofan engines and began to catch up with them with all their might.

Soon they came up with their own turbofan engine, turning Rolls-Royce, the leader, into a bull. Even though they developed the RCo.8 and later RCo.16500 with a thrust of 10 pounds based on the RCo.11 by increasing the air flow rate at the urging of customers, they still failed to regain the dominant position of engines on Boeing and Douglas models! After the Pratt & Whitney JT3D began to be delivered, Boeing and Douglas naturally had no reason to give Rolls-Royce more opportunities.

The first practical aircraft engine in the world of Bright Sword is also closely related to John Bull. Its core prototype comes from John Bull's RB.168 "Spey"!
This aircraft engine developed by Rolls-Royce in the main world in the 60s can basically be regarded as a pioneer in the second-generation turbofan engines. Although its indicators are somewhat inferior to those of the famous engines in the main world, the parameters of the basic model of the RB.168 Spey engine are 5025 mm in length, 1093 mm in diameter, 1850 kg in weight, maximum thrust of 54.5 kN, afterburner thrust of 91.1 kN, and thrust-to-weight ratio of 5.05. It has no competitiveness in the modern main world.

However, compared with the turbojet engines at that time, it has the characteristics of high thrust, low fuel consumption, good maintainability and long service life. This engine not only has excellent performance, but also has high reliability and strong adaptability. It can be widely used in different aircraft models, from fighters, fighter jets to attack aircraft and even passenger aircraft! It is simply a panacea in the aviation industry!

Ren Zhong obtained the main design of this outdated engine with the help of the main world, and then reproduced it in the world of Bright Sword!
Spey engine

BAC1-11 passenger plane equipped with Spey engine (end of this chapter)