Chapter 649 The Temptation of Finance

Before Christmas, on December 13th, the movie version of "Downton Abbey" has started to be released in England.

In fact, the movie version of "Downton Abbey" itself is not a big production, and the production cost is only 20 million US dollars. After all, Barron knows that in the original time and space, the first movie version of "Downton Abbey" was a huge success. It was successful, but when the production team ambitiously increased investment and produced a second movie version, the result was a big flop...

This also proves that this series of movies really does not have the potential to rely on large-scale productions to recoup costs. In other words, if you want to make money, just one movie is enough. Even if you are preparing to release a second movie, it is best not to feel too good about yourself. Just keep costs under control.

Of course, the reason for this is that in the original time and space, the main actors of "Downton Abbey" only signed a contract for one movie at the beginning. By the time the second movie was produced, because those actors were already "accomplished", As a result, film remuneration has increased significantly, so production costs have also increased significantly.

In any case, after the movie was released, Barron specially booked the theater and invited some of his friends to watch it, and the final evaluation was still very good.

After all, the TV series version of "Downton Abbey" has been broadcast in the UK for five years, with a total of 6 seasons. The powerful and dignitaries including Her Majesty the Queen are all fans of this series, and its basic base in the UK is Still very solid.

This can be seen from the box office of this movie. In the week of its release, "Downton Abbey" topped the British box office list.

It seems that, at least based on the performance of this movie, the global box office of the original time and space of more than 200 million US dollars will not be much different, and may even surpass it.

According to his previous habit, when the weather in England gets colder, Barron will take his family to spend time in Australia, where the climate is warmer.

However, because his and Bonnie's second son Richard was still too young, they did not leave too early this year.

It just so happened that he could take advantage of this time to deal with some British matters.

For example, the expansion of the British Automobile Group...

Prior to this, the British automobile industry had experienced a rather embarrassing history - Britain was once the second largest automobile producer after the United States, but its automobile brands were gradually acquired. ——The bankruptcy of Rover Motors. It can be said that since 2005, the British Empire has lost all its car brands...

Fortunately, Barron came forward later and established the British Automobile Group by buying back some brands, which was able to save some face for the British automobile industry.

At present, it seems that the British Automobile Group is relatively successful. In the field of luxury cars, after the launch of Bentley's new flagship, sales have begun to grow steadily through vigorous marketing; the luxury SUV models launched by Aston Martin have also been well received. The market welcomes them; the two brands Land Rover and Jaguar can still compete with Mercedes-Benz and BMW for the time being...

Under such circumstances, the British Automobile Group has also received strong support from the British government. However, the government has also been hoping that the British Automobile Group can expand its manufacturing scale in Britain.

After all, as I said before, due to the subprime mortgage crisis, according to the British government's estimates, the number of unemployed people in the UK will increase by 2 million before Christmas this year. What the government is now seeking is naturally to increase jobs, especially in comparison Stable high-paying jobs to maintain the stability of the entire society.

Of course, they will also provide due support to the British Automobile Group for this purpose.

However, at present, the production lines of the two brands of Land Rover and Jaguar of the British Automobile Group will be mainly opened in China and South America, which can reduce production costs. After all, in the competition with brands such as Mercedes-Benz and BMW, cost-effectiveness will be a very important factor. factor.

Next, they will expand Bentley's production line in Crewe and Aston Martin's SUV production line in the UK.

In fact, the main reason for the decline of the British automobile industry is that British automobile brands are too conservative. In order to maintain the tone of the brand, they insist on handcrafting and production, and pay too much attention to the quality of raw materials. This is In the competition of some mid-range and low-end cars, they lag far behind foreign brands that are vigorously promoting assembly lines.

Just like Bentley and Aston Martin, they still insist on handcrafting. Although this can maintain the "noble and luxurious" impression of the British brand, its output is hard to describe...

After all, for a country's automobile industry, the backbone is the mid- to low-end cars produced on the assembly line. Only their sales can support the entire upstream and downstream industrial chain.

Hand-made cars can produce tens of thousands of cars a year, which is completely incomparable to the hundreds of thousands or millions of cars produced by those automobile groups every year, and its role in promoting the industrial chain is completely incomparable.

But in terms of production costs, just in terms of labor costs, British Auto Group is indeed not suitable for the layout of British Automobile Group in this area at this time, so it can only increase the production of luxury car brands such as Bentley and Aston Martin. .

But in addition, British Automobile Group will add another engine production base specifically for the production of Cosworth's new high-end engines, which will also add a lot of jobs.

"Jobs don't just appear out of thin air..."

After meeting Secretary of Commerce, Barron complained to Julia Moore:

"Without adequate policies, who would be willing to expand the scale of the factory? After all, everyone likes to make money more easily through finance. The wages of ordinary workers in Britain are so high that they need advanced products with higher profits to maintain them, but the manufacturing industry in Britain has no competitiveness at all now!"

As he said, the financial industry has always been the pillar industry of Britain. Not only other people, but also Barron himself, after easily earning such huge profits through financial investment, especially shorting the subprime mortgage crisis, even with the memory and experience of his previous life, he almost lost himself in the pleasure of making "quick money"...

But he finally understood that making money through financial investment, to put it bluntly, is a kind of "plunder" of other countries. Perhaps when the West occupies the dominant position in global finance, this method can indeed easily "make money while lying down", but how long can this situation last?

If it is just like this, then I am afraid that the Devonshire family will be like the Rothschild and Morgan families in the future. After the financial order is replaced, it will gradually become silent.

How powerful the Rothschild family was in the past, but it was only because of World War II and mistakes in decision-making that they withdrew from the American market at the beginning of the last century. Now, they have withdrawn from the center stage of the world and can only retreat to Europe.

After this subprime mortgage crisis, they may be much weaker.

Of course, Barron's "credit" is also partly in this. After all, although the Rothschild family has been driven out of the United States, at least in the financial industry of countries such as Britain and France, they still have considerable influence. However, with Barron's acquisition of Northern Rock Bank and the injection of capital into Barclays Bank and Natixis Bank, their influence will be eliminated again.