Yokohama Electron 14
Continue Capital had earned the largest profits of any private equity firm in the past three years.
By returns alone, White Road and Softbox couldn’t even compare. It had become especially famous for making enormous gains through mergers and acquisitions.
So when word got out that Continue Capital was moving to acquire Yokohama Electron, not only retail investors in Japan but institutions piled in to buy as well.
“If Continue Capital is willing to pay such a high price, then isn’t the stock cheap right now?”
“They’re buying it together with Softbox, so they must be planning a major post-acquisition investment campaign.”
“We might not get another chance if we don’t buy now.”
Thanks to that, Yokohama Electron’s stock price soared.
But after the Sankei Shimbun pointed to Continue Capital and Yokohama Electron as the force behind Chairman Samara’s escape, the mood changed.
Politicians, sensitive to public opinion, moved to restrict Continue Capital’s bid, and up to that point everyone thought justice had finally been served.
Then what happened?
Rupert Liu’s coup brought the takeover negotiations to a halt, and to avoid being saddled with a stripped-down Yokohama Electron, the Enple alliance filed lawsuits in both Japanese and American courts.
The shockwaves from that decision rattled the entire Japanese stock market.
Yokohama Electron’s share price collapsed without mercy, and with the acquisition breakup fee suddenly at risk, Kionos plunged right alongside it.
The CYP Consortium, which had sold out just before the break, made a profit, but everyone else took a hit.
The entire Japanese semiconductor industry suffered, while Continue Capital and Softbox walked away with a handsome gain.
Japanese investors were furious.
“Those bastards were definitely pulling strings behind the scenes!”
“What, did they stir up a coup because they thought they couldn’t win the acquisition themselves?”
“How much damage do they need to do to Japan before they’re satisfied?”
“Filthy pieces of crap!”
“Arrest them now!”
“What the hell is the Japanese government doing?”
Strictly speaking, the Yokohama Electron China incident had nothing to do with Continue Capital. But the investors didn’t see it that way.
“Wasn’t the bid restriction itself just a show?”
“Exactly! It let them unload their shares naturally, didn’t it?”
“Did politicians take bribes from Continue Capital and do this for them?”
“Who was it?”
“They need to be disciplined immediately!”
“We’ll make sure they lose the next election!”
Until recently, some politicians had boasted as if the CYP Consortium’s bid restrictions were their own triumph, claiming they were protecting Japan from companies that had harmed the country and should never be allowed to buy Japanese firms lightly.
But once the situation reversed, they were suddenly desperate to claim they had nothing to do with any of it.
* * *
After the Yokohama Electron takeover battle ended.
I received a call from Chairman Song Gazuki. He asked me,
“No way.”
I had no idea whether he believed me or not.
Either way, it didn’t matter.
For several days, I stayed in bed and didn’t leave the house.
After a big investment, I always lost the urge to do anything for a while, as if the rebound from it had drained me. To be honest, handling that much money was stressful enough on its own.
This time especially, aside from Rupert Liu’s coup, it was an event that hadn’t existed in the first timeline. I’d worried that some unexpected variable might pop up, but I was relieved that everything had ended exactly as planned.
When I got up after ten, Seonwoo was still home.
“What? You still haven’t gone to work?”
“What are you talking about? I just got off work.”
“Ah...”
Looks like he’d pulled an all-nighter at the company.
“What were you doing?”
Seonwoo flopped down on the sofa as if exhausted and said,
“Working. I finished that Block Valley game I mentioned.”
“Really? How is it?”
Seonwoo grinned.
“It’s killer. I designed the whole space to fit the brand identity perfectly, and the game itself is fun too. Even I had a good time playing it.”
He sounded absurdly confident.
Still, even if he usually seemed a little unserious, he was always dead serious when it came to games.
“By the way, I saw in the news that Japan’s semiconductor industry is basically finished.”
After Kionos, even Yokohama Electron had blown up, so it really was a chain of funerals.
There was no easy way they’d recover now, not for a long time.
“They’re saying Enple’s stock dropped because of you, too.”
“Come on. How much did it even drop?”
Enple and PSMC had fallen as well, but by only three to five percent at most, nothing serious. Compared to the cash they held, the losses were barely a drop in the bucket.
Still, it had to sting.
“And why is that my fault?”
“Then whose fault is it?”
“...”
Probably CEO Tim Keaton’s, for making the wrong call.
At first glance he looked like a decent man, but he would never let anything threatening Enple slide.
In the business world, where was there room for leniency?
Instead of relying on the other side’s mercy, it was far better to make it clear that if they poked you, they’d get hit back.
“Are you planning to keep going up against Enple?”
“If it’s necessary.”
We’d earned a great deal by now, but it still wasn’t enough to surpass Enple.
Still, give it a few more years, and the story would be different. By then, we’d have data centers all over the world and completely dominate the cloud market.
Seonwoo, looking tired, lay back on the sofa and asked,
“Are you staying home today too?”
“No, I have plans, so I’m heading out now.”
“With who?”
“A former coworker.”
* * *
I rode in a car with a driver and headed to Yeouido.
It was lunchtime, so people were spilling out of the building in waves, and the sidewalk was packed.
It was strangely fascinating that so many people worked in a single building.
My destination was in front of a budae-jjigae place.
It was just after noon, but a long line was already stretched out in front. Inside, the place was packed shoulder to shoulder.
There were so many people seated at the tightly packed tables that it was hard to get through.
A woman sitting at a table near the back waved at me.
“Over here, Miru.”
I pushed through the chairs and made my way to the table with some difficulty.
“When did you get here?”
“Five minutes ago. If we’d come any later, we would’ve ended up in line too.”
“There are so many people.”
“It’s like this every lunch hour these days.”
For the record, this was a restaurant Senior Dong-ho had recommended. And it was also a place I’d come to with her before.
It hadn’t seemed this popular back then.
Sung Yoon-ah looked at me and asked,
“It’s been a while since you came here, right?”
I glanced around and said,
“Yeah. I used to eat here all the time.”
“How many times? This place only opened a little before you quit.”
“Well...”
During the first timeline, I’d eaten here like crazy. That was because Senior Dong-ho loved it like crazy.
The nice thing about budae-jjigae was that it cooked fast. You just prepared the ingredients in advance for the number of people, poured in the broth, and turned on the heat.
It wasn’t one of the top five lunch choices for office workers for no reason.
Sure enough, it started bubbling within five minutes of us sitting down.
“Go ahead and eat.”
“Thanks for the meal.”
After lunch, the weather was nice, so we each grabbed a coffee and sat down in a nearby park.
She looked mildly surprised.
“I’ve never seen you eat that well before, Miru.”
“I didn’t know I could eat this well either.”
For days, I’d had no appetite and barely eaten at all because I couldn’t be bothered. But once I started, the food went down easily, and I ended up having two bowls of rice.
Maybe because it tasted like memories.
We drank our coffee and talked.
“You must be happy. I heard you made around forty billion dollars on this investment too.”
“Well, I didn’t pocket all of that by myself.”
What was a consortium for, if not that?
Profits were divided in proportion to how much each party invested. Softbox and PIF had both made a handsome sum thanks to me.
If you listened to me, good things happened.
As lunchtime drew to a close, I saw clusters of people walking around with coffee in hand. Most of them were laughing and chatting with bright expressions.
For office workers, lunch hour was no different from an oasis in the desert.
I gazed at them for a while and smiled.
“What’s wrong?”
“It reminded me of the old days. I really did work here for a long time.”
If I hadn’t regressed, I’d probably be one of those people right now.
But now I was more familiar with Wall Street than Yeouido.
“You only worked here for a few months.”
“Well...”
Before I regressed, I’d still worked here for three years.
Regression had erased those years, but to me, they were still memories.
“Shall we head out?”
We made our way toward the company building just like the office workers returning to their desks after lunch.
On the top of the neatly rectangular building, the company name DA Securities was written in bold letters. It somehow gave me the feeling of coming home.
“When I first joined, I thought I’d die here.”
Sung Yoon-ah joked,
“You still can. If you come back, I’ll welcome you.”
“I’ll think about it if I ever quit Continue Capital.”
We were about to go in together when someone called out to us.
“Oh! Isn’t that Miru?”
“What brings you here?”
The slightly short, stocky man was named Hwang Yeong-min. The man beside him, with glasses and short hair, was Bae Geun-seok.
They were none other than my rookie-year classmates.
I greeted them warmly.
“Long time no see.”
“Seriously. How long has it been?”
Seeing my old classmates again after so long made me genuinely happy.
Back when we first met at rookie training, they’d all seemed a little clueless, but so much time had passed that they’d become proper finance professionals.
By now, this was probably exactly the stage when they were getting used to the work.
“How have you been?”
“We’ve just been grinding away at company life. What about you, Miru?”
“I’m doing well too.”
Bae Geun-seok asked,
“Is it true that Assistant Manager Lee Dong-ho is now the head of Continue Capital Korea?”
The rumor had already spread?
Then again, it would be stranger if they didn’t know.
I nodded.
“That’s right.”
“Wow! Then you’re working there too?”
“Yes. I am.”
The two of them couldn’t hide their amazement.
“Wow, Continue Capital...”
“I heard the Korea branch is investing in entertainment and fashion.”
Sung Yoon-ah smiled brightly.
“Hmm, it sounds like both of you are very interested in Continue Capital.”
At the question from my rookie classmates, or rather the future chairman’s daughter, they both shook their heads at once.
“No, not at all.”
“I like DA Securities.”
Watching them, I thought to myself, They must have a hard enough time with company life already.
We took the elevator to the president’s office on the top floor.
When we went inside, President Ahn Ho-jung greeted us warmly.
“Welcome.”
“Good to see you.”
This was our second meeting since we’d last seen each other for the short-selling system project.
Beside him stood Sung Yoon-ah’s mother, Vice President Yang Ja-eun.
“Good to see you. It’s been a while.”
“Hello, Vice President.”
She looked a little thinner than when I’d seen her before. With work in the group and caregiving on top of that, there probably weren’t enough hours in the day for her.
We exchanged greetings and sat down.
“The reason I came today is that I’d like to propose something.”
At my words, both President Ahn Ho-jung and Vice President Yang Ja-eun looked interested. For the record, DA Securities had made a fortune from the short-selling system project last time.
At first, only three securities firms had participated: DA Securities, Yukseong Securities, and Hwaan Securities. But after the GL Entech incident, investors responded strongly, and now almost every securities firm was participating.
Sung Yoon-ah said,
“You said it was a proposal about fintech, right?”
“Yes.”
Fintech was a combination of finance and technology.
Financial services were already digitalized, but fintech meant further developing them. That included payments, remittances, wealth management, and investing.
I explained more specifically.
“What do you think about creating a simple payment service based on the stablecoin Penny?”