Author: Why change the name again
Link: https://www.zhihu.com/question/664992882/answer/3603990233
Source: Zhihu
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I know some state-owned PE firms that have been doing one thing in the past few years, acquiring private enterprises. Generally, they target small leading companies in traditional manufacturing industries with stable cash flow but no high growth (meaning no need for further investment), and the owners are older and looking to retire, while their children are not interested in taking over. The usual idea behind such acquisitions is to find a listed company, sell at a premium to the listed company, and then exit. Since they usually only acquire local companies, it can be considered very safe and controllable. However, unfortunately, the stock market is too poor, valuations have plummeted, and the companies acquired in previous years are now losing money on their equity stakes. Therefore, this year they started to recover. If you sold to a state-owned company at a certain price in previous years, now you have to buy back at that price. I don't know if interest should be calculated (I didn't ask specifically). If they don't buy back, they will be investigated for tax evasion because they are all local companies, so it's very controllable. There are only two types of people who have no way out: those who have really lost everything and those who have emigrated. By the way, I'm talking about Hangzhou, the best place in China for protecting private enterprises. As far as I know, some places are even tougher. They might take you for tea first, then arrange for you to go in and figure things out for yourself. You have to think about what you've done and come clean. If you can't figure it out, they'll keep you locked up without questioning you until you do. (If the punishment is unknown, the deterrent is unpredictable.) How serious is this matter? It's serious enough that a certain public security bureau in Hangzhou issued a notice saying that if police from other provinces come to arrest someone across provinces, they can be arrested directly, while recording the incident and calling the Hangzhou police for assistance. In other words, in some places, for various reasons (such as the recent telephone recording that brought down that pyramid scheme), they might arrest you and take you back to make you confess and pay fines. In 2022, I wrote that after the crackdown on education and training in 2021, almost all European funds withdrew from China. At that time, a former colleague I knew was managing a European family fund. Their company had invested in many primary market schools, but they ended up losing everything. They were very angry and said, "You're like an abusive husband. Today, I don't like you, so I can beat you up. In a few days, I'll say I still love you. Get lost, I'm done playing, I'll never buy again in my life." When I said this, no one believed it. Many people said they would still play, it doesn't matter to you, Saudi Arabia is still buying, BASF is investing in China again, and so on... Those with clear minds know that without research or evidence, a piece of paper can destroy an industry, and then it can be tacitly restored. Today, they can fine you even if you use your father-in-law's account, and tomorrow they can manipulate stock prices without penalty to have you warm up the scene. Wu Jinglian once said, "Even a casino has rules, but here it's worse than a casino." In 2021, there was a popular saying on Zhihu and Bilibili, "Hang the capitalists from street lamps." At that time, I said it doesn't matter if you lie flat, but if all the capitalists lie flat, then everyone will be unemployed. As a result, a bunch of people replied to me saying, "If there are no landlords, who will farm the land?" So in such a place, what is capital for? Now many people say they laugh when they see "reflection" and "independent thinking." I want to say, in a socialist country that still needs to develop a market economy with Chinese characteristics and strengthen the capitalist market, I also find it amusing to see "market economy" and "capital market."