Chapter 2585 Noble Beggar

The core business of Chaowan Commune in the past few years has been the football business, so the focus of work of Shi Jinglin, Ning Yameng, and Wu Yu is also in Europe.

This allowed them to form some relevant connections and master some social resources in Europe.

This time I wanted to buy a national treasure, but Zhou Buqi didn't participate much.

But Ning Yameng came to Paris last week and wanted to help Wu Yu get this done.

very smooth.

The owner of Panfang Lei is the widow of a French collector. This collector's main job is as a banker, and his ancestors were also wealthy. He is considered a well-known big capitalist in France.

However, the manipulation of gold prices later failed, and the family assets shrank by 90% overnight.

Later, he became a noble beggar with the title of "legend".

There are too many similar beggars here in Europe.

The glory of our ancestors is very bright, and the dignity of the family is very important. However, after a hundred or two hundred years of inheritance, the family's heritage has long been exhausted. In order to maintain a decent life, one of them becomes more weak than the other.

Especially France.

Many French tabloids are extremely exaggerated. In order to deceive sales, they have compiled a series of thrilling stories about some legendary families, which are full of conspiracy theories and fantasy novels. They even say that some families have assets as high as 30 trillion US dollars... Later, these The story was seen by a domestic financial reporter. He compiled a series of tabloid articles surrounding five or six legendary families, compiled them into one family, and wrote a book called "Currency War" that was half altered, half copied, and half fabricated. The best-selling book has fascinated countless people.

Another example is over there in the UK.

Some marquis and earls wear a crisp suit when they go out, which was left by their grandfather and was specially handmade. People who don't know what's going on think that this is aristocratic culture. They care about inherited treasures and only use handmade products.

In fact, our ancestors were rich and now we are poor.

New high-end clothes are unaffordable.

Some civilians' clothes are not decent, so they can only wear the leather shoes passed down by their father and the belt passed down by their grandfather to show their different status from ordinary people.

This is the case now.

The widow did not inherit much tangible wealth from her late husband, but she did have some collections. But if you inherit a collection, you will also have to pay 50% inheritance tax... If you can't pay it, you can only sell it in a big sale.

I went to Paris and met Wu Yu and Ning Yaxian.

Wu Yu was so excited that he wanted to pounce on him in the hotel lobby.

Zhou Buqi smiled and said, "So happy? It seems to be going well."

Wu Yu nodded repeatedly like a chicken pecking rice, "It went well, it went well! Husband, do you know how many Chinese works of art Mrs. Laurent has in her hands?"

Several people took the elevator upstairs, and Zhou Buqi asked casually: "How many? 15 pieces?"

Wu Yu pursed her lips and smiled, "One zero is missing."

"Huh?" Zhou Buqi was slightly startled, "150 pieces? That many?"

"154 items!"

"so much!"

"France is the second largest collection of Chinese antiques in the world after the United Kingdom... Well, the United Kingdom also has a lot of exported porcelain. In France, it was basically the British and French forces who entered the Old Summer Palace and stole it, so They are basically from the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and most of them are from the Qing Dynasty.”

Wu Yu seemed to be really interested in collecting art, and he spoke eloquently.

Zhou Buqi sighed, "We have to spend money to buy back the things their ancestors robbed."

Wu Yu shook his head gently, "This was not stolen by Laurent's family. His family used to be a big capitalist, and they bought it after changing hands many times. At most, there were more than 200 pieces, and they were sold one after another in the past few years. Ordered several batches.”

"Ah? Sold?"

Zhou Buqi thought he could pack them all up and take them away at once.

Wu Yu chuckled and said, "We held two well-known auctions in the past few years, the 'Qianlong Palace Artworks Auction' and the 'Paris Collection of Chinese Artworks', where hundreds of pieces of art were sold. Madame Laurent sent more than 40 pieces, and they sold for 120 million."

"120 million?"

"It's Chinese currency, which is 15 million US dollars."

"It's not expensive either..."

"That was several years ago... probably in 2007. At that time, China's art auction market was not very popular, and there were not many wealthy people in the country. After the 2008 Olympics, the situation changed a lot. When the price changed, the price skyrocketed, and she didn’t sell much.”

Zhou Buqi asked: "What about this time?"

Wu Yu said with a smile: "We can basically win it this time. Her husband has passed away and her children are living in the United States. She also wants to sell everything that needs to be sold and move to New York."

Zhou Buqi immediately grasped the key point, "His son is in New York?"

Wu Yu said softly, "Yeah", "She graduated from Harvard, and now... she seems to be working at CBS. She also has two granddaughters who are also studying in high school in New York."

"Working at CBS..." Zhou Buqi smiled, "This is much easier to talk about."

Wu Yu blinked a few times, "Why is it easy to talk?"

Zhou Buqi said: "Traditional TV stations like CBS have become increasingly difficult. In order to solve the survival problem of the ABC TV network, Disney also came to Ziweixing Universal to cooperate. If it continues to stay at CBS, it has no future."

Wu Yu pursed her lips and said with a smile: "It seems that there is no need. Mrs. Laurent also wants to sell all her family collections in a hurry. In addition to more than 150 Chinese antiques, there are also 700 or 800 French works of art. However, They are all paintings from the Salon School and are not very valuable."

Zhou Buqi doesn't know much about other things, but he knows a lot about salon oil paintings. He even bought a batch of them two years ago.

Salon oil painting is a faction, and its biggest characteristic is painting women, naked women.

If a painter of that era could not draw women, he would not be popular at all.

Such as Van Gogh.

Later, when Impressionism became the mainstream, Van Gogh's paintings became extremely valuable.

During the period when salon paintings dominated Europe, a large number of oil painters appeared in society, most of which were funded by noble ladies. While raising the painters, they would also strip off their clothes for the painters to create art.

There is no tradition in Europe of destroying art and destroying civilization, so most of the paintings have been handed down, and the number is extremely large.

Salon paintings by well-known painters can be very expensive, with a painting costing hundreds of millions of dollars. Many unknown paintings are very cheap, some costing only a few thousand or tens of thousands of dollars.

A few years ago, Zhou Buqi was obsessed with salon paintings and felt that this was real art, so beautiful!

After buying a batch of oil paintings, they were quickly stopped by Wen Zhixia and Shi Jinglin.

He said that the children at home are getting older and if you hang so many pictures of naked women on the wall, you will spoil them. Zhou Buqi thought it made sense, so he didn't buy much and took down all the artwork on the wall.

After discussing for a while, we made an appointment to meet Mrs. Laurent tomorrow and negotiate the price.

You can also buy all those salon paintings at once.

If it's good, keep it for a long time.

Not so good... It can be used as a gift in normal times, or given to some business friends and partners during holidays. Using oil paintings as gifts can also show the elegant taste of Boss Zhou.

In the evening, I saw Tang Binchen.

He came to France to discuss business.

This is not an outsider.

Zhou Buqi invited Tang Binchen to the hotel to have dinner together.

Tang Binchen said: "In the past few years, France's IT outsourcing industry has seen almost no growth, but SaaS services have grown rapidly. Last year's growth rate was 50%, and this year it is estimated to reach 40%."

Zhou Buqi nodded, "The French are quite capable."

Tang Binchen smiled and said, "It's better than other places in Europe."

Outsourcing means that when you are doing a business, you don’t want to do anything, so you outsource it and let others do it. You only want a result.

SaaS service means that when you are doing a business, you don't want to make it too complicated, so you rely on the convenience provided by the cloud computing platform. You only need to do some simple work to get the results.

The European Internet industry is relatively backward as a whole, and it mainly adopts an outsourcing system. France has begun to make changes in line with the times.

Zhou Buqi said: "After all, France is a big country in Europe. It is always a good thing to set an example and push the IT market closer to cloud computing."

Tang Binchen said: "Not only the SaaS business, but the growth of mobile advertising is also amazing. This year's growth rate is estimated to reach about 35%. The main reason I came to Paris this time is to promote this matter and communicate with the French operator Orange Expand Cooperation……"