Chapter 276 The Richest Man in England

In March, Forbes released the 2004 list of the world's richest people.

This list lists the top 1,000 richest people in the world.

The world's richest man on this list is still Bill Gates, who ranks first on the list with a net worth of US$46.6 billion.

Following closely behind is stock god Warren Buffett, with a net worth of US$42.9 billion.

But in this list, the most eye-catching one is the Duke of Barron Cavendish from England.

Well, even though Barron has begun to hide his wealth in various ways, the assets he holds at this time are still rated at US$20 billion by Forbes.

This puts him tied for sixth place on the list with five members of the Wal-Mart family who hold the same shares, second only to Paul Allen, another shareholder of Microsoft.

In addition to being the only British person in the top ten of this list, the bigger factor that attracts attention is Barron's age - a super rich man who is only 24 years old.

You know, even if the list is expanded to the top 100, most of the members on the list are over 50 years old.

Barron is the only one under thirty years old.

The person closest to Barron in age among the top 100 on the list is the 37-year-old Russian tycoon Roman Abramovich, ranked 26th on the list, who is the new owner of Chelsea Club.

Therefore, Barron still occupies the position of the world's richest man under 30 years old. The rest of the top ten assets combined are not as high as his net worth. It can be said that he is the first in the world.

Coincidentally, in the 2004 British Rich List launched later by the Sunday Times, Barron Cavendish became the new richest man in Britain with a net worth of 11 billion pounds, replacing Westminster's last year. Duke's position.

Interestingly, Abramovich is also included in the list of the richest people in Britain released this time. With a net worth of 10 billion pounds, he ranks second on the list of richest people in the UK.

In the original time and space, in this list, Abramovich became the richest man in England...

It can be regarded that the appearance of Barron has saved a lot of face for Britain. Otherwise, if a Russian becomes the richest man in Britain, the British people will have mixed feelings.

But looking over a long period of time, this seems to be acceptable. After all, after this, there were very few pure British people at the top of the British rich list. Indians and Russians took turns taking the throne...

"To our richest man..."

After clinking glasses with the Duke of Westminster, Barron smiled at him and said:

"Don't make fun of me, Mr. Grosvenor. You also know how much water there is in this list. Now my debt is much higher than their so-called net worth."

Regarding what Barron said, the Duke of Westminster just smiled. He understood that even those rich lists were full of water, especially those whose companies were not listed companies. A rough estimate, but for the young Duke in front of me, I'm afraid the numbers on the list will be less, not more.

"I heard that the Bankers Association has extended an invitation to you?"

"Yes, I'm considering joining."

"why not?"

Hearing Barron's answer, the Duke of Westminster couldn't help but be a little confused. It was obvious that joining the Bankers Association would be very beneficial to Barron, especially after he mastered Standard Chartered Bank. Although Standard Chartered Bank Standard Chartered Bank does not have much business in the UK, but what you need to know is that the entire City of London is, to a certain extent, controlled behind the scenes by the Bankers Association.

Barron can also guess what the Duke of Westminster is thinking, but he really has no interest in collaborating with those bankers, and he has too many names now, such as the House of Lords. As a member of Parliament - he can count on one hand the number of times he has attended meetings of the House of Lords this year.

There are indeed some benefits to joining the Bankers Association. For example, in the previous life, the Bank of England’s case of manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) and the Sterling Repo (Repo) interest rate broke out in 2012, involving labor Heavyweight banks such as Edbank, Barclays, and Royal Bank of Scotland.

As one of the most important benchmark interest rates in the world, Libor affects a large number of swaps and futures contracts, commodities, derivatives, personal consumer loans, home mortgages and other transactions. It is a financial transaction market with a scale of trillions of dollars. It even affects the central bank's judgment on monetary and economic policies and plays an important role in the global market.

Therefore, once the manipulation scandal broke out, the financial market was shocked. When people discovered that such a mature and conventional pricing mechanism had been dominated by interests for a long period of time and was full of black-box operations, the feeling of being fooled and manipulated instantly transformed into a collective anger.

This time the investigation was led by the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Commodity Futures Commission (CFTC), and involved regulators from three continents including the United Kingdom, Japan, and the European Union. It can be said to be massive. According to the investigation, starting in 2005, These manipulative behaviors are already occurring.

In the end, the participating banks were fined hundreds of millions of dollars, and a large number of senior executives resigned as a result.

And their manipulation of Libor and Repo is done through the British Bankers Association, which designates these...

Since he knows that this matter will break out sooner or later, Barron does not have much interest in participating. After all, the Standard Chartered Bank he currently owns is mainly in emerging markets outside the UK.

Otherwise, even if he does not participate in the manipulation, those supervisory agencies will definitely investigate the banks he controls and cause trouble.

"Barron, I want to talk to you alone..."

The Prince of Wales took Barron to a room upstairs in the party hall. After the two parties sat down, his expression became slightly serious:

"Does the matter about Ke Luo have something to do with you?"

Hearing the question from the Prince of Wales, Barron's heart did not fluctuate much. He himself did not think that his existence in Colo could really be hidden from everyone.

His expression was relaxed and he said calmly:

"Your Highness, I am a businessman who is only interested in making money. And being able to get Colo out of France's control and move closer to us in England is in itself beneficial to Great Britain, isn't it?"

"Although I say that, the French are already dissatisfied with us, and it's not just the French who are paying attention to Colo, but also the United States..."

"Yankee?"

Barron smiled and said:

"There's no oil in Kolo, so they won't be interested."

"No matter what, I hope you can act with caution and don't play with fire."

Although on the surface Barron casually agreed with the Prince of Wales's words, he still disagreed in his heart.

Great Britain has declined after all. Where has the strength of the empire gone? Is such a small Kolo worthy of the crown prince's mobilization of troops?

However, considering that starting from Margaret Thatcher, they almost overturned against Argentina, then the current performance seems reasonable.

Therefore, without the rise of a great power, there is no dignity for ordinary people. Nowadays, the majestic empire on which the sun never sets has to follow the footsteps of the United States, making it inconvenient to act on its own.