Chapter 207 Partition Wall
"Your Highness the Duke, I think you care too little about Argent Real Estate Group..."
After receiving the invitation from Viscount Bute, Barron came to his mansion in Chelsea again, but he didn't expect that the other person's first words would be like this.
"After all, I am just a shareholder of Argent Real Estate Group, and you run the group very well, so there is no need for me to intervene."
Barron glanced at the Viscountess, who was sitting aside and looking at a fashion magazine, and said:
"And the last time I injected capital, it seemed that Mr. Viscount didn't want me to have too much involvement in the real estate group's affairs..."
"How could it be? There must be a misunderstanding. Your Highness the Duke, I hope we can be close partners..."
It stands to reason that Viscount Bute was not unaware of his relationship with the Viscountess before, and now the Viscountess' belly... Although it is not particularly obvious, it would be too much to say that Viscount Bute couldn't see it.
So what does his attitude mean today?
When Barron asked Chris about this issue earlier, she didn't say much, she just said something mysterious and mysterious. In summary, it meant that there was nothing to worry about.
When Viscount Bute said that he hoped to remain a "close partner" at the end, his eyes were directed at the Viscountess, or to be precise, the Viscountess's belly...
He was slightly excited at this time, and his face was slightly flushed, which inevitably made Barron feel a little weird.
"Since we are partners, we need to trust each other. I don't want to hide anything. Just like what happened before, I don't want it to happen again. I have no idea about the Argent Group. It is just a financial investment."
"I believe we will definitely become the closest partners, Your Highness the Duke. There is another thing I hope to get your help with..."
Seeing Barron's questioning look, Viscount Bute said:
"It is the employee pension fund of our Stuart Mining Group. Some of the funds need to be re-searched for investment channels. I heard that DS Capital has launched a new capital-guaranteed fixed-income fund product. I wonder if it can be provided to this fund? "
Huh? What kind of request is this? It’s obviously to give yourself money!
"What is the amount of funds?"
"100 million pounds..."
After Viscount Bute’s brief introduction, Barron learned that the Stuart Mining Group’s employee pension fund had suffered losses last year due to previous investment mistakes, thus lowering the average annualized investment return rate in the past five years to 3 %the following……
It’s no wonder that he likes Athena Fund’s fixed-income fund products, which guarantee capital and have a yield of 10%-15%, which is much better than the investment performance of their employee pension fund.
Here we will introduce the British pension system. Currently, it is a three-pillar pension system consisting of state pension, occupational pension and personal pension.
The state pension is a public pension that provides basic retirement income guarantee; the private pension composed of occupational pensions and personal pensions assumes the important task of increasing the pension replacement rate and further improving the quality of retirement life.
The so-called occupational pension is provided by employers for employees, with joint contributions and tax benefits, and an "automatic enrollment" mechanism is implemented.
Personal pensions adopt a trust structure and are voluntary to join, usually through a direct contract between the individual and the pension institution.
To put it simply, employees with legitimate professions will deduct part of their income into the state pension; then the company will deduct part of it, plus the part contributed by the company, into the occupational pension.
Employees with legitimate careers must join these two.
If you want your pension to be larger after retirement, you can also choose to join the personal pension products of some pension institutions.
The employee pension fund of Stuart Mining Group mentioned by Viscount Bute is one of the occupational pension funds.
As mentioned earlier, the Bute family first made their fortune because they discovered a large number of coal mines in Wales, making the Bute family one of the richest families in the world at that time.
The company they were mining for coal in Wales at that time was the predecessor of the Stuart Mining Group.
Later, after the coal mines in Wales were exhausted, Stuart Mining Group began to seek development in other places. Currently, the mining resources they are involved in include coal mines, copper mines, iron ores and many other types, in England, Australia and Africa. Every land has its mines.
Although the scale of Stuart Mining Group is far less than that of leading British giants such as Glencore Mining Group and Anglo American, its scale is still considerable and it is one of the pillar industries of the Bute family.
The original surname of the Bute family was Stuart. Later, after being awarded the title of Marquis of Bute, they began to use Bute as their surname.
That's why the name of the mining group they own is Stuart...
It is also worth mentioning that Viscountess Chris’s surname is also Stuart.
In fact, the Viscountess was related to the Bute family, but that was many generations ago.
Of course, this kind of thing is not a big deal among the nobles. Not to mention that such distant relatives who have been separated for many generations, even close relatives, were very common among the previous nobles.
The total scale of Stuart Mining Group's employee pension funds exceeds 500 million pounds, but a company with such a long history is not like the "young" Argent Real Estate Group - they need to leave enough cash at any time to provide withdrawals for retired employees. .
In addition, there are other investment allocations in progress, so the scale of funds that the Stuart Mining Group Employee Pension Fund is preparing to invest this time is about 100 million pounds.
"Your Excellency, Viscount, I need to explain to you that our fixed income fund products are not always able to maintain capital. This is just a way to reassure investors in the early stages of the fund..."
The same is true in itself. The so-called "capital guarantee" commitment itself requires DS Capital to have assets sufficient to endorse this.
When the Athena Fund is below a certain scale, DS Capital is fully sufficient to support such a guarantee, but if the size of the Athena Fund reaches billions or even billions of pounds, which far exceeds the scope of DS Capital’s own assets, even if they Even if it claims to be "capital guaranteed", there won't be enough assets to back it up.
"I understand. At least we can protect our capital now, right?"
After Barron introduced the fixed income products of the Athena Fund to Viscount Bute, Viscount Bute chose an investment method with a closing period of five years and an average annual return of 12.5% for the Stuart Mining Group's employee pension fund.
In this way, the capital size of Athena Fund will increase from US$250 million to approximately US$400 million.
Just after Barron and Viscount Bute confirmed the matter, a rather delicate-looking young man walked up to Viscount Bute, leaned close and whispered something into his ear.
Barron's hearing was already very keen, and he vaguely heard the general content.
"Your Highness the Duke, I need to take care of something..."
"Then I'll go back first and let the fund manager contact you when the time comes for the Athena Fund."
After hearing this, Barron was about to leave, but heard Viscount Bute say:
"I have specially prepared a dinner to entertain His Highness the Duke..."
He took a special look at his watch:
"I'll be back in about an hour. Chris, please chat with His Highness the Duke first..."
After hearing Viscount Bute's words, Barron and Chris looked at each other and felt that the emotions in her eyes were very intriguing.
"what happened?"
After Viscount Bute took the young man out of the reception room and closed the door, Barron looked at the Viscountess not far away and asked softly.
"Can't you guess it yet?"
The Viscountess put down the magazine in her hand, with water in her beautiful eyes:
"Do you still need me to remind you?"
Thinking of what the Viscountess had said to him before, about Viscount Bute, and the other party's performance today, Barron had a vague guess, but he still couldn't be sure...
After all, I have heard of perverted things, but I never thought I would actually meet them...
At least I never thought of this scenario...
And just when Barron was thinking this, the Viscountess had already taken action...
She said in Barron's ear:
"I have your child in my belly. If you want him to help you raise your child, don't you want to give him a little sweetness?"
"Is this his purpose today?"
The Viscountess smiled slightly, lowered her head, and began to use her eloquence to persuade Barron...
At the same time, Barron vaguely heard what seemed to be heavy breathing behind the wall somewhere in the room.
