Chapter 154: Shengxin Demands Cleanliness, Strongly Backing Zhang Long

Ling Yushan's mindset had indeed collapsed.

After comparing the trading operations of Zhang Long's proxy account, he suddenly had an epiphany and understood why Hongze's recent performance had been rising steadily, and why that highly profitable account had stopped right after he started trying to snatch the fruits of Hongze's labor.

So, the person operating the account behind the scenes and making massive profits was the true source of Ling Zhiqing's confidence.

...

"Damn it, I'm furious."

In a certain detached villa, Ling Yushan looked at his phone, which still remained unanswered, and really wanted to smash it.

His good sister Ling Zhiqing had left him with a hollow shell of Hongze. The fact that Hongze's trading and business development performance had both declined over the past half-month was entirely normal.

Previously, the marketing department had mostly relied on the "Selected Stock-Picking Radar" sent by Qian Caiying.

There were records in Hongze's backend showing which proxy account had operated all those radar-recommended stocks.

This was simply infuriating and extremely aggravating.

"Want to watch me make a fool of myself?"

Ling Yushan took a deep breath, a flickering light dancing in his eyes. Although Ling Zhiqing had taken away the secret weapon for business development, a bull market was about to arrive, which was the real reason he targeted Hongze in the first place.

As long as the bull market arrived, he would take off.

Besides, since Ling Zhiqing could find a master trading genius, he, Ling Yushan, was not necessarily incapable of doing the same.

Of course, he had thought about digging out the person behind Ling Zhiqing today, but it was probably a dead end.

That account had stopped right when the takeover of Hongze began in late February. Clearly, it was following the instructions of Ling Zhiqing and Qian Caiying, or the three of them were friends, or perhaps it was Zhang Long, who had joined Shengxin together with them—which meant it was a complete dead end.

If it were Zhang Long, having joined Shengxin and become a registered practitioner, he would no longer be able to operate a personal account and would instead be using Shengxin to assist with his own business development performance.

How could he possibly still be helping Hongze? Nonsense.

So whether it was Zhang Long or not didn't matter anymore; he could just go find a new "Zhang Long."

As for how to find one, throw money at the problem.

He refused to believe that in a massive metropolis like Shanghai, there weren't any practitioners who were awesome at stock analysis, or even relatively capable ones, as long as their stock-picking skills weren't too shabby and could generate performance metrics.

High salary, high position, luxury cars, and beautiful women?

Thinking of this, Ling Yushan picked up his phone and opened WeChat. His temper was a bit fiery tonight.

He summoned his little mistress, the vixen, to quench the fire.

...

"Invest another six million?"

The next day in the Shengxin conference room, Zhang Long brought up his topic. "There's no need to rush into making a profit. To a certain extent, I can guarantee that Shengxin will definitely experience an upward leap and breakthrough in the near future. Therefore, reputation-related lawsuits should be resolved as they come; don't drag them out."

"Whether it's Shengxin's headquarters or other branch offices, completely resolve the issue of employee layoffs, and make sure the due compensations are fully distributed. Not only will this recover a significant portion of our reputation, but these employees can also become targets for expansion."

"Better to use people you know than strangers."

Of course, even if they provided the overdue compensation to the departed employees, not all of them would return. However, most of the ones who did would be more loyal to Shengxin and would work much harder.

A conscientious company is worth sticking with.

"I disagree."

The representative of the neutral faction and also the director in charge of finance, Director Xu, directly objected, "Chairman Zhang is injecting an extra six million, and the others are matching it for a total of twenty-four million. Do you know how many things can be done with thirty million yuan? A whole lot."

"If the Shanghai headquarters, the Beijing and Hangzhou branches, and branches in other cities all start compensating laid-off employees, thirty million probably won't leave much behind."

Goodness, would it really cost that much?

Hearing this, Zhang Long was slightly stunned. Just how many waves of layoffs had there been over the years that thirty million yuan could be entirely wiped out?

No wonder corporate layoffs and delayed compensation were so common; it turned out the savings were so substantial.

Previously, Zhang Long thought that out of the thirty million yuan, at least twenty million would be left over, and then in a short while, they could open branch offices in several other major cities, integrate them into Shengxin's operational framework for simultaneous development, and step up to a new level.

Now it seemed that after paying the remaining layoff compensations from recent years, at most, the headquarters and the three companies in Beijing and Hangzhou could maintain a slightly favorable operation before everything was gone.

To open more branches later, they would either have to continue making matching capital contributions or wait until they became profitable and use the profits.

...

"Compensation must still be paid."

Zhang Long insisted on his view, his gaze sweeping across the room. "The stock market is ruthless, but Shengxin has a heart. Employees work hard, sweat for their pay, and when they are laid off, giving them compensation is only right. Why did I leave Shengxin back then? It was because Director You deducted my commissions."

"That feeling is miserable."

"Everyone, if the day comes when it's your turn to leave Shengxin and there's no compensation either, how would you feel?"

...

The Shengxin board of directors fell into a somewhat heavy silence.

As senior executives, no matter how bitter the bear market had been these past few years, it hadn't affected their quality of life, because the wealthy have too many channels to make money.

Ordinary employees seemed to have nothing other than going to work to earn a salary, relying entirely on their wages.

It was the reward for their hard work and sweat.

"Shengxin needs to be clean."

Zhang Long concluded in a deep voice, "When Director Zhu asked me to join, he said he wanted to return Shengxin to a clean state. But after Director You, Director Guan, and the others left, it still wasn't clean enough. Shengxin still owes far too many employees their remaining layoff compensation. Even if not a single one of them ever returns, at least the slate will be clean."

"I can't guarantee it, but I can promise that I have full confidence in making up for everyone's losses as soon as possible."

"Okay, I support it."

The moment Zhang Long finished speaking, Qian Caiying raised her hand in agreement. "Which one of us here is short on money? Nobody. We just chip in a bit and the amount is gathered. It won't affect our lives anyway. Stop living such petty, stingy lives."

"I support it too."

Ling Zhiqing raised her hand with a smile and said, "Isn't it great for Shengxin's brand to be clean? We're all going to be billionaires worth hundreds of millions in the future; don't be so stingy over this tiny bit of meat."

"Don't lose to us young people."

These words were spoken lightly, yet carried immense weight. Director Zhu, Director Xu, Director Jiang, and the others looked at each other with bitter smiles.

Had they really all grown old? They truly couldn't understand the thoughts of the young people today. Why go against money?

"Fair enough, indeed so."

Jiang Zhenghui smiled and shrugged. "The youngest of us old fogies is over thirty-five. We really are getting more and more backward as we age, a bit embarrassing indeed."

"Let's just go with Chairman Zhang's idea and thoroughly return a completely clean slate to the Shengxin brand."

At this point, only Director Xu was left.

As for Director Zhu, he wasn't important; without speaking, he had quietly raised his hand to support Zhang Long even before Director Jiang spoke. Director Xu, the vice president in charge of finance, felt a wave of melancholy.

Back then, they too had been full of passion, but nowadays that passion had long since completely faded away.

Being young was truly wonderful, allowing one to be willful and true to oneself.

"Fine then, let's do it."

Director Xu let out a soft sigh and finalized the decision.

...

With the turmoil among Shengxin's top management, the departure of Director You, Director Guan, and others naturally wouldn't end with just a few people. Some of the middle management under their banner would gradually be replaced by fresh blood, much like how Ling Yushan replaced Ling Zhiqing's people.

Originally, the Blizzard Team and another team under Hongze were supposed to jump ship at the end of the month to collect their full attendance bonus for March.

But now there was no need for that.

Because Ling Yushan had directly started driving people out. In particular, the Blizzard Team had jumped ship from Shengxin in the first place, and now that Qian Caiying and Ling Zhiqing had both gone to Shengxin, why stay?

"What? Go back to Shengxin?"

Chang Song and Bai Xiaoying were somewhat dazed. In fact, Liang Xue was also a bit dazed, but Qian Caiying couldn't possibly be wrong.

"Brother Long went back too?"

The second piece of news was that Zhang Long had followed Hongze's two executives, Qian Caiying and Ling Zhiqing, back into Shengxin. This was a bit terrifying; the ways of the world were truly unpredictable.

"Mhm, we're going back."

Liang Xue nodded calmly. This news obviously made Chang Song and the others even happier—tremendously happy.

Returning to Shengxin with Brother Long holding down the fort meant their future performance would surely skyrocket, and the money would roll in by leaps and bounds.

...

"Wait, no, no..."

Suddenly, Chang Song paused, looked at Liang Xue with wide eyes, drew in a breath, and said, "The 'Selected Stock-Picking Radar' information that President Qian provided to us every day in Hongze—that couldn't have been provided by Brother Long, could it? It must have been! No wonder it felt a bit familiar; that was Brother Long's flavor."

Oh my lord, he had hit upon the truth.

Seeing that their team leader Liang Xue's expression showed neither astonishment nor surprise—evidently knowing it right from the start—Bai Xiaoying and the other Blizzard Team members became even more pleasantly surprised.

Brother Long was truly awesome, an absolute deity.

Just like that, amidst the confused and startled gazes of another team that had also jumped ship to Shengxin—who couldn't understand why the Blizzard Team was so happy about jumping ship.

Jumping ship was hardly a wonderful thing after all; there was turmoil and insecurity, yet they were joyful?

Good grief, had they jumped out of their minds?

Or was the old company Shengxin just that much better?

...

"Shengxin's major client list..."

In the analyst department, Zhang Long obtained Shengxin's major client list. At the level of at least five million yuan in capital, the ones Zhang Long was familiar with were Qian Caiying's former account and Chen Youwei's, both of which had long since ceased moving.

Or rather, they were locked in and trapped to death.

Shengxin actually had quite a few clients with ten million or more, most of whom were being guided by gold-medal analysts, and the daily stock-picking reports originated from them.

There were five gold-medal analysts, one of whom was essentially at the director level, while the other four were managers.

No matter how bearish the bear market was, every day there would be stocks going up, and stocks hitting the daily limit-up often appeared as well.

It all depended on whether one could screen and catch them.

After formally signing and settling into Shengxin, Zhang Long's prophetic function had activated once again. As for whether it worked at home, he didn't know yet, but over the past two days, with the stock market opening in the morning and afternoon at Shengxin's office, it was usable.

However, he didn't offer any opinions on the stock-picking reports just yet. Today was Wednesday, and it was his official entry into Shengxin's gold-medal analyst department, where his title was also essentially that of a director.

The previous director hadn't stepped down, and Zhang Long had no heart to manage personnel, so things continued to run as usual.

However, the former analyst director had to report to Zhang Long. There was no problem with that, since he was the boss after all.

Zhang Long had become one of Shengxin's shareholder bosses, while the former analyst director was merely an employee, holding only some sweat-equity dividend shares of the company and nothing else.

"They're all here."

Zhang Long nodded, pondered slightly, and then spoke, "From now on, before writing the daily stock-picking reports, everyone should let me look over your statistics first. I will select the suitable stocks before writing them up; the rest I don't care about."

"My intuition is relatively good."

These words caused the analyst director to roll his eyes internally. Stock-picking analysis based on intuition? How childish.

However, since Zhang Long was a shareholder boss, and his performance when doing business previously had indeed been very good, fine then.

Letting him look it over first would be fine.

Without any struggle for power or profit, Zhang Long easily reached a consensus with the analyst department, counting as the first to complete his work handover. Meanwhile, things over at Qian Caiying and Ling Zhiqing's side were a bit rougher, but both of them could handle it.

"Phew, I'm back."

Liang Xue led the Blizzard Team's return, watching President Qian, President Ling, and Zhang Long coming downstairs to welcome them.

It felt somewhat unfamiliar yet surreal. It turned out that unconsciously, Zhang Long had already reached his current heights.

A dragon is destined to soar through the skies.

And snow? It melts into the soil... perhaps.

PS: Seeking monthly votes for ten thousand words daily.