Money Keeps Piling Up No Matter How Much I Spend

Chapter 122

Translator: DreamscribeA heavy silence flowed amid the hot steam of the sauna.

Before long, hyung let out a short sigh and spoke.

“Vice President.”

“Ah, yes. Chairman.”

"I'm very disappointed."

“I-I’m sorry.”

The Vice President was clearly on edge today.

“I believed you’d do better than this, at least.”

“If I may offer a small excuse… I’ve had a lot to deal with lately. I’ve recently started managing an asset management company as well.”

“That’s why I gave you a week off. So you could practice.”

There was a reason why hyung was scolding the Vice President in the sauna today.

“If you’re a tank, then act like one. You’re supposed to go out front and take the hits for your team! What were you thinking retreating to the back?!”

“My survival instincts just kicked in without me realizing…”

“You were the same back when you were a trader. You could’ve made gains if you’d pushed forward just a little more, but you always played it safe and ended up pulling back.”

“Still… I didn’t lose much.”

“You didn’t gain much either, did you?”

“......”

The reason hyung was nagging the Vice President today was none other than the raid we had earlier.

“Jin-ho. Say something, will you?”

“Well… what can I even say? The Vice President gave it his all.”

"C, CEO-nim!"

“Of course, since the tank kept retreating instead of staying up front, the dealers at the front were all wiped out, the healers were mercilessly slaughtered, and it was a total disaster.”

“......”

“In the end, we couldn’t even clear the raid and just wasted our time, but it’s fine. We’ll clear it next time, right? Then again, you might fall back again and cause another wipe and we won’t be able to clear it again…”

“Just curse at me instead, CEO-nim.”

Hyung and I burst into laughter as we looked at the Vice President with his head hanging low in gloom.

“I’m joking, man. It’s not like we couldn’t beat the raid just because you died.”

“Huh? But didn’t we actually fail?”

“Everyone was just messing around to tease you. Haha. If we’d really gone all out, we’d have cleared it in no time. Our guild members might be on the older side, but when it comes to the game, everyone’s dead serious. They’re good, too. And more importantly, Jin-ho even gathered them separately to train.”

The Vice President looked like he had been properly fooled.

“Still, make sure you practice a bit. A tank turning his back on the boss is simply unacceptable.”

“I understand. I’ll do my best not to disgrace our guild!”

“That’s the spirit. But don’t put too much pressure on yourself. Jin-ho built this landmark here so we could all relax and have fun on weekends, didn’t he?”

“Yes. CEO Jung’s decision to build the landmark here was truly excellent.”

“Aigoo. Why is everyone embarrassing me again?”

“No, seriously. Usually, when I go out alone on weekends, my wife complains, but now she likes this place the most. The other guild members are also completely satisfied, aren’t they? The wives have things to enjoy, the kids can play separately, and we get to game. This place is paradise.”

When I first said I was going to build a landmark for our guild members, the reactions were lukewarm.

They doubted whether we’d really come here every weekend to hang out.

But once it was completed, the guild members never missed a weekend and always came with their families.

“Coming here on weekends to refresh your mind and relax, how great is that? Of course, I’m sure the maintenance costs aren’t a joke.”

“Well, this much is fine. I’m doing it because I enjoy it.”

“Oh, right. I’m sorry to bring up work all the way out here, but what’s this about Tottenham? That’s the team our country’s player is in, right?”

“Yes, that’s right. To be precise, EMIC is trying to sell off all its shares in Tottenham.”

Tottenham is a team that represents North London in the UK.

It’s known as one of the Big 6 and has a large fanbase, and it is owned by EMIC.

“EMIC… isn’t that a well-known investment firm in the UK?”

“That’s right. EMIC holds 85% of Tottenham’s shares, and now they’ve put all of it on the market, shopping it around.”

Tottenham used to be one of the more profitable clubs.

But due to the impact of COVID, football clubs all over the world were now suffering.

Since they couldn’t accept spectators, they weren’t earning ticket revenue.

They couldn’t run other promotional broadcasts or advertisements, yet in the meantime, player wages and employment costs were steadily being paid out.

“So, Samuel Levy, the chairman of Tottenham, said this is the first time he's facing such a financial crisis and initiated a large-scale restructuring.”

“And even that didn’t fix it?”

“No. If the UK government provided a loan, it would offer some breathing room, but the UK doesn’t have enough financial leeway to lend out several hundred billion won. On top of that, Tottenham recently built a new stadium, and I heard their debt exceeds 1 trillion won.”

That meant there was no income coming in, only money going out.

“So, how much are they selling it for?”

“About 7 trillion won.”

“7 trillion won? Sounds expensive.”

“It is expensive. According to reports from Forbes and KPMG, the club’s value is estimated to be around 3 trillion won.”

“And yet they’re asking 7 trillion won?”

“They probably want to make a killing since they’re selling anyway. Especially because the most famous Korean player is playing for Tottenham.”

In other words, they deliberately added a premium to sell at a higher price.

"What scumbags."

“They’re actually quite notorious for this sort of thing.”

“Still, this isn’t right. Doubling the price? It’s not like they’d raise the price that much for other countries. Let’s drop it. We weren’t that interested to begin with.”

“Yes. I was planning to oppose the acquisition as well.”

“What about you, Jin-ho?”

“I’m not thinking of acquiring it at that price either.”

They were clearly trying to take us for fools, but we had no intention of going along with it.

And yet, why?

“......?”

I felt a strange jolt, like something tingling had just passed through me.

***

“CEO-nim. The EU has sent over a new document. They said they’re willing to proceed under conditions similar to the US. Actually, it’s even more generous. While the US agreed to let us operate freely in exchange for holding onto our shares for three months, the EU doesn’t even require that.”

“......Why?”

“I’m not sure.”

The EU had tried to strangle us with all sorts of regulations, attempting to control our money as they pleased.

But suddenly, they changed their stance.

All I had done was send them a blank document.

“There aren’t any poison pill clauses or anything like that, are there?”

“No, not at all. They’ve already discussed it with several European countries and reached a conclusion. They’ll grant us more freedom, just like the US did.”

“Does that mean the European market is in that much trouble?”

“I think at first they were being prideful, but as the market situation worsened and public opinion deteriorated, they must have changed their minds. I heard the EU president passionately persuaded the heads of state.”

Perhaps they concluded it wasn’t the time to be picky about where the money came from, and that they needed to revive the financial market even with our funds.

It seemed the EU president believed the best solution was to inject large amounts of capital as soon as possible. Or maybe they had some other reason for helping us.

“What should we do?”

“If they’re easing regulations to this extent, there’s no reason not to proceed. Good thing we had the funds ready in the account.”

“Yes. Honestly, I didn’t expect them to ease restrictions this much. Maybe they only realized the urgency once things started burning down around them. So then… shall I bring you the research material first?”

I glanced at the employees standing behind Department Head Seo.

Reports were piled up high.

“......That’s a lot.”

“This time, unlike in the US where we entered a single national financial market, we’re investing across the entire European market. Just within the EU, there are 27 member countries. Even if we’re not entering all of them, we still need basic information on each.”

The towering stack of documents made me feel almost suffocated.

But… it had to be done.

And it wasn’t like I’d be doing it all by myself.

The team members here had to review them even more thoroughly than I did.

“As for the basic proposal, we’ll start by purchasing corporate bonds to stabilize CDS first. Once we’ve spent those amounts, the total funds we’ll be able to manage will be around 500 trillion won.”

It wasn’t as if there were no proposals at all.

The first priority was to buy up large quantities of corporate bonds to stabilize the CDS and give the market a brief moment to catch its breath.

“If we were to name the representative financial markets in the EU, they would be France, Germany, and Italy. In order to revive the financial markets of the European countries belonging to the EU, the best strategy is to first enter the markets of these three countries.”

And once these three were stabilized, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, and so on.

It was deemed best to inject funds in sequential order.

“So, roughly dividing by percentage, we believe that injecting around 80% into France, Germany, and Italy first, and then evenly distributing the rest into the other markets is the right approach. Germany and France each have financial markets of about 5,000 trillion won in scale, so capital usage is flexible, but Italy’s is only about 1,500 trillion won, so injecting too much too suddenly could cause a shock.”

I nodded and checked the reports brought by the team members.

“.......”

As if they'd been waiting just for this day.

The moment I opened the research materials, my intuition began to roar to life.

Lights seemed to twinkle here and there as if begging to be bought, and I began selecting them one by one, marking them off.

There’s just so much… will I even finish this today?

We’re talking about dividing and spreading a whopping 500 trillion won.

Which means, I need to determine exactly how much to allocate to each investment.

And that’s not all.

“Um, CEO-nim. But… since you’ve marked these stocks, that means you intend to buy them. How long should we hold them for?”

In the US, we were forcibly locked in for three months.

There was no such requirement in the EU market this time, but still, we should probably hold them for at least 1 to 2 months.

That’s the minimum to genuinely revive these markets.

“Then should we go with about 2 months?”

I waited for my intuition to react to Department Head Seo’s suggestion.

But there was no response at all.

“If you don’t like 2 months, how about 1 month?”

“.......”

Still no reaction, I shook my head.

“Th-then maybe 3 weeks?”

“.......”

The problem was that even 3 weeks brought no reaction.

The Department Head kept lowering the number.

“2 weeks… 10 days… 1 week…”

“.......”

“F-five days? No. Three days!”

Still no response, so this time Hye-rin shouted out.

“One day!”

This wasn’t an auction, for crying out loud.

But even at one day, my intuition remained completely silent.

Could it be that my intuition suddenly broke?

If not…

“CEO-nim. N-no! You can’t!”

“Yes?”

“You absolutely can’t do that!!”

W-what can’t I do?

***

When President Charol said she would lift all restrictions, there was intense backlash within the EU.

They said she had completely lost her mind.

But the outrage didn’t last long.

They, too, couldn’t help but cool their heads.

Reality was much colder than emotions, after all.

If they didn’t implement financial relief right now, companies would begin to collapse in rapid succession.

There was no choice but to open the gates to Kwangwoon and the National Pension Service.

Of course… Charol had also been personally feeling threatened, which made her even more desperate to persuade the heads of state. To the point where rumors were circulating that Charol might have taken money from Kwangwoon.

‘No one understands how I feel.’

Honestly, it might’ve been easier if she had actually received money.

The fear she felt when she received those hundreds of pages filled with nothing but blank space.

No one could truly relate unless they’d experienced it themselves.

“So, how is it going? Are they distributing the funds now?”

“Yes. Kwangwoon and the National Pension Service are first purchasing corporate bonds to initially stabilize the CDS.”

Today was the first day of that operation.

That was why the President had been watching all day to see how Kwangwoon and the National Pension Service’s funds were moving.

Even though she had granted them free usage rights, she had to at least pretend to be monitoring them from the side.

“That’s a relief.”

And it seemed they were carrying out the agreement properly.

They had begun by purchasing a large volume of corporate bonds, rescuing companies that were on the brink of bankruptcy.

“What about the rest?”

“After purchasing the corporate bonds, they’ve been actively sweeping up stocks.”

As expected, they were proceeding step by step, carefully.

They were likely planning to buy up a large number of shares, raise the prices, and then sell them off after a few months.

Hadn’t they made a fortune in the U.S. using that exact method?

Honestly, it did sting a little inside.

But if that method could revive the European market, then so be it.

In fact, she was beginning to feel that bringing them in had been an excellent decision.

“But their actions after that were a bit strange.”

“Hmm? What’s strange?”

“I expected them to hold onto the shares for a while after buying them in bulk, but not long after, they immediately sold them.”

“Pfft!”

At that report, Charol spat out the water she had been drinking.

“W-what? They sold them right away? It hasn’t even been that long since they bought them!”

“Yes. In fact, some of the buy and sell orders were executed within just a few minutes, and in more extreme cases, within seconds.”

“!?”

What could that possibly mean?

“K-Kwangwoon is day trading right now!?”

With that much money?