Everyday Life (4)
There was a crowd gathered all around Hong Gyeongseok.
Even Hyeoksu, who had been standing beside Dongho and selling insurance, had somehow drifted over there as well.
Dongho and I exchanged a look.
I asked quietly, “Did we hire a new employee without me knowing?”
Dongho looked taken aback. “Huh? Didn’t you hire him?”
“No way.”
“If nobody hired him, then how did he get in here?”
“……”
Could he have been hired by headquarters?
I never expected to run into a Continue Capital employee here without even knowing we had one.
People in general often didn’t know the names of private equity firms, since they weren’t investment banks. But Continue Capital was now famous enough that even ordinary people had heard of it.
That was only natural, given how many major incidents in the financial world over the past few years had involved Continue Capital.
At this point, there was even a saying on Wall Street: if something happened and nobody knew who was behind it, you should suspect Continue Capital first.
Park Seunghun asked, “How did you get into Continue Capital?”
“After I graduated, I worked for a British hedge fund for a bit. That’s when I got the offer. Continue Capital wasn’t really well known yet back then, but I saw Representative Lockhart’s vision and decided to join him.”
“Wow! So you’ve met David Lockhart too?”
“Of course. He’s our CEO.”
“Do you have a business card?”
“I’d like one too.”
Hong Gyeongseok handed out his business cards to everyone around him.
Somehow, I got one as well.
On the expensive-looking card, the company name Continue Capital was printed large in English. So was his name.
William Hong.
His title was none other than VP, Vice President.
At a private equity firm or an investment bank, that might as well mean something around assistant manager or team leader level.
Since so many of their clients were high-ranking people, companies often padded titles just to keep up appearances.
If you went to a large global investment bank, there could be thousands of VPs there.
Hong Gyeongseok said smugly, “I’m currently the head of the global M&A strategy team. You know Continue Capital’s attack on LD Studio this time? I’m the one who gave Representative Lockhart the information.”
“What? Seriously?”
“Of course. How do you think an American private equity firm figured out that a Korean game company was manipulating the odds? It was all confirmed through the internal report I submitted.”
“You wrote the report?”
“I’d been playing Brotherhood for years. The random boxes were a little off. I got the feeling something was manipulated right away, so I wrote up a report and sent it to the company. I said it looked like fraud, so we should dig into it.”
“Whoa, amazing.”
Not only that, he even neatly inserted himself into incidents that had already been reported by the media.
According to Hong Gyeongseok, he had been on the scene during the Hanjung Group crisis, and he had been there during the Blackwood incident too.
“That was a really serious mess. If they hadn’t been able to clean it up after causing all that chaos, they’d have had nothing to say even if the SEC had come after them for market manipulation. Everyone thought Representative Lockhart had lost his mind. But the moment it was resolved, the whole atmosphere flipped completely. You guys should’ve seen the look on Representative Lockhart’s face back then.”
“Ooooh!”
The others kept asking him question after question, curious as anything, and Hong Gyeongseok answered smoothly, as though he had genuinely lived through all of it himself.
Then Hyeoksu asked, “I heard Continue Capital was the one that helped Chairman Samara escape from Japan this time. Is that true?”
Hong Gyeongseok waved a hand. “Come on, that was all just a rumor cooked up by the media.”
“Rumor, my ass. Continue Capital’s working with Yuseong Electronics, and didn’t you also short Kionos?”
“I’m telling you, it’s not true.”
It wasn’t really a denial so much as, I know, but I can’t say it out loud. That kind of answer inspired even more confidence than pretending to know everything.
Dongho murmured under his breath, “Wow. He really does work at Continue Capital. If he weren’t here, the company probably couldn’t function.”
“Hmm…….”
So there really was talent like that here.
Hong Gyeongseok kept talking about the things I had done as though they were his own achievements. It was like watching a financial action film unfold right in front of me.
Hearing about the things I’d done through someone else’s mouth felt strangely fresh.
But the important thing was that it was all bullshit.
Dongho couldn’t hide his admiration. “He really does just spew lies the second he opens his mouth.”
Then why was he pretending to work at Continue Capital?
Was it because he wanted to show off in front of classmates, juniors, and seniors by bragging about working at a good company?
If not, then…….
“So, Continue Capital doesn’t take outside investment?”
“If they were raising a fund, it’d be chaos.”
“I heard they don’t take outside investors. Is there any way to invest?”
After taking a satisfying swig of beer, Hong Gyeongseok slipped into his next pitch.
“Actually, we’re currently raising a blind fund for VIP clients.”
“A blind fund? What are you investing in?”
“If I told you that, it wouldn’t be a blind fund, would it?”
Ordinary funds raise money after setting the investment target and the amount they plan to collect.
They specify whether the money will go into bonds, stocks, or real estate, and if it’s stocks, they say which market and which company.
A blind fund, however, collects the money first and only decides what to invest in afterward.
There are usually two reasons for doing that.
The first is to have the cash ready so you can move immediately when a good deal appears. The second is to keep your strategy hidden.
For example, if your goal was a hostile M&A and you publicly announced, “We created this fund to buy shares in Company A,” then market participants would catch on. If the stock price shot up before you even began buying, the strategy would be ruined.
So you gather the money first and ask no questions.
Because people are investing purely on trust in the manager’s skill, a blind fund could only be launched by a firm with serious name recognition.
“But you must know at least a little about it, right?”
“Tell us something.”
“As you know, the Saudi crown prince just changed, and hydrogen energy is getting a lot of attention. I can at least tell you that much: we’re looking at partnering with Hwaan Group and investing in Korea. I can’t tell you anything beyond that.”
“Oh! Hydrogen……”
“That sector’s exploding right now.”
At this point, it was obvious he was trying to scam people.
And yet Hong Gyeongseok still hadn’t actually said a single word asking anyone to invest.
Instead, the people around him were the ones growing restless and bringing it up first.
“Can I put money into the blind fund?”
“Would small investments be possible too?”
Hong Gyeongseok smiled faintly and shook his head. “One slot starts at one million dollars. We don’t even accept anything below that.”
“Ah……”
There was no way ordinary office workers who had only been employed a few years would have that kind of money lying around.
As everyone made disappointed faces, Hong Gyeongseok added one more thing.
“Well, there is a way, but……”
“What is it?”
“You can combine it with an existing account. I can handle that much on my end.”
In other words, he meant you could add ten thousand or one hundred thousand dollars to an account that already had one million in it. Not a bad idea.
“Still, we won’t take anything under thirty thousand. Anything smaller is too hard to manage.”
At thirty thousand dollars, most office workers could scrape the money together with a loan. By setting a minimum and refusing to take money from just anyone, he only made the investment seem more trustworthy.
Everyone started speaking over one another.
“I’ve got about thirty thousand.”
“If I take out a loan, I think I could raise fifty thousand.”
“Me too, me too.”
They all looked desperate to invest.
Well, it was Continue Capital, after all.
Even I was starting to think, Maybe I should invest too. I can’t miss this chance, right?
Dongho clicked his tongue. “That’s some smart thinking.”
“Right?”
If he had started by saying they were taking money directly into a personal account, everyone would have thought something was fishy. But once you lay down a plausible explanation like this, nobody thinks twice about it.
“See? I told you. Whenever you come to an event like this, you’re guaranteed to meet both an insurance salesman and a scammer.”
“How did you know?”
Could this senior have regressed too?
Dongho looked very pleased with himself. “I told you already. I’m a reunion profile attendee.”
“……”
Was that knowledge gained through repeated experience?
And yet something like this had happened, and I couldn’t remember it at all.
Come to think of it, I had only attended the wedding and skipped the afterparty. I must have had some other appointment that day or something.
“Then why the hell are there so many scammers in this country?”
Now I remembered.
Hong Gyeongseok.
The worst scammer Korea University had ever produced.
In the first timeline, he had started some company and run a pyramid scheme through it. The amount he’d stolen was over three billion won, enough to make the news.
The reason I hadn’t remembered it right away was that the Primus incident had buried this case pretty thoroughly.
Back then, I hadn’t been in my right mind either, so all I remembered was that one of my classmates had run a scam.
That’s right. It had been this bastard, Hong Gyeongseok.
Who would’ve thought he’d use Continue Capital’s name to scam people this time?
From what I’d heard, the people he knew were already investing huge sums.
And among them weren’t just students, but several professors too!
Korea University was one of the best universities in the country.
You might think the students and professors there would never fall for something like this, but smart people getting caught in financial fraud happened more often than you’d expect.
Even in the Bernard Madoff case, the largest Ponzi scheme in history, global financial firms and famous Hollywood celebrities everyone had heard of were among the victims.
Among the people who had invested in Therapis was Christopher Edward, who had served as U.S. Secretary of State, and among those who had invested in Thomas Motors were engineers from Harvard and Caltech.
And in Korea, how many intellectuals had invested in the Primus Fund?
Either way, I couldn’t just sit there and let him scam my classmates using Continue Capital’s name.
How should I take that bastard down?
I was thinking it over when someone came up to me.
It was Jin Se-yeon.
She sat down across from me and said, “I heard you got fired from DA Securities.”
“Strictly speaking, I didn’t get fired. I quit.”
Jin Se-yeon hesitated for a moment, then said, “Was it because of me?”
“Because of what?”
“I mean the Primus incident.”
“……Huh?”
What was she talking about now?
“No, it had nothing to do with you at all.”
At my answer, Jin Se-yeon let out a small laugh.
“Sure it didn’t. I know, Miru.”
“……”
Know what, exactly?
What kind of misunderstanding was she having here?
After a few drinks, Jin Se-yeon was quietly setting her own mood. Resting her chin on one hand, she tilted her head about forty-five degrees and exposed the pale line of her neck.
Feeling the atmosphere turn strange, Dongho sitting nearby rose to his feet.
“My life planner, Hyeoksu. What did you say the accidental injury coverage was up to again? If I die, it really pays out one billion won with no questions asked, right? You can promise you’ll become my family’s life planner if anything happens to me, can’t you?”
“……”
Why was he suddenly calling desperately for his life planner when he had been bragging just moments ago that nothing bad would happen to him?
Once the meddler was gone, Jin Se-yeon leaned toward me and said, “Coming here brings back old memories.”
“What kind of memories?”
“We had our freshman welcome party here, remember?”
“Yeah, I guess we did.”
Actually, she and I had known each other since middle school. We’d met again in college after all that time.
“Miru, there’s something I want to tell you.”
“What is it?”
“I……”
And then, yet another interruption came.
Hong Gyeongseok plopped down in the seat Dongho had just vacated.
“What are you two talking about?”
Jin Se-yeon fell silent.
Apparently completely oblivious to the mood, Hong Gyeongseok kept pestering her. “Se-yeon, aren’t you interested in investing?”
“No. I’m not really into that stuff anymore.”
Maybe she’d nearly gotten burned by Primus Fund once already?
Unlike the others who showed interest, Jin Se-yeon really did seem uninterested.
Hong Gyeongseok kept pressing anyway. “As you know, Continue Capital doesn’t really take outside investment. If it’s not this time, you’ll probably never get another chance.”
What was this, a home-shopping special with one minute left until sellout? What do you mean, never get another chance?
I looked at Hong Gyeongseok and asked, “You say you work at Continue Capital?”
At my question, he answered confidently, “Why? Are you interested too?”
I nodded.
“Then I’m very interested.”