When Hu Guangyuan stepped out of the carriage, his face turned pale. This Confucian businessman, who has always been known as a first-class figure among Hui merchants in the eyes of outsiders, actually forgot to say goodbye to Wang Chunyun when he left.

Sitting in the carriage, looking at Hu Guangyuan who almost fell down through the window, Wang Chunyun just twitched the corners of his mouth.

Although the righteousness between the Hui merchants is deep, if they encounter a fellow villager in distress when they go out, they will reach out to help.

However, the central bank has now become the main business of their Wang family, and it is basically a matter of friendship between fellow villagers, and it is impossible for them to let Hu Guangyuan hijack a huge amount of capital to buy shares and give up the foundation they have worked so hard to create.

Besides, it is the Ming Dynasty that is short of money now, not the central bank. As long as they are given a little time to develop, the central bank, which controls Daming's tax revenue, overseas trade and water conservancy construction, will soon become a monster that controls the entire Daming economy.

Is sixteen million taels of silver a lot? If the gold and silver price adjustment plan planned by his father is successfully implemented, the silver of the Ming Dynasty will be depreciated by at least half. The central bank of the Ming Dynasty is indeed worthy of the four words of the central bank of the Ming Dynasty.

If you want to exchange such a small amount of money for the goose that lays golden eggs in someone else's hand, then don't blame him for being too harsh. Wang Chunyun shook his head, closed the curtain of the carriage, knocked on the wall of the carriage, and signaled that the coachman could go back.

It is no wonder that Hu Guangyuan was angry, he proposed to get 51% of the equity, but Wang Chunyun insisted that he could only give 25% of the equity, and there was no room for compromise.

This is no longer a business talk, but a knife sharpened and ready to slaughter a fat pig. The so-called friendship of the Tongjia and the so-called friendship of fellow villagers have obviously been left behind by Wang. Hu Guangyuan found that the channel to take a stake in the central bank seemed to have been cut off.

As soon as he walked into the Hui Chamber of Commerce in the capital, he saw him sharp-eyed among the few businessmen sitting in front of the hall drinking tea and talking.

These merchants, who had been chatting absent-mindedly, immediately got up and greeted him, wanting to ask him about the progress of the matter.

As for the representatives sent by these various firms, although Hu Guangyuan felt that he was exhausted today, he still cheered himself up and explained to them 1510 how he met Wang Chunyun today.

Cai Maosheng, who was in his early 30s, suddenly said angrily after hearing this: "This surnamed Wang has been in the capital for a few days, and he doesn't even recognize him in the township?" 25% equity, he also said export. The old man of my family also said that he was a sentimental person, what kind of affection is this reading. ”

Several of the merchants around him were also indignant, but although they complained repeatedly, they always retained the last shred of their senses, and did not offer to break the negotiations and return to Jiangnan.

The business name that these people represent is, in fact, a pawn shop. Different from the pawnshops that Wang Fengyuan united, these businesses are the most powerful among the pawnshops opened by Hui merchants.

The so-called pawn shop, in this era, is equivalent to a bank that charges high interest. However, in order to obtain high returns, it is not enough to rely on high interest, but also to ensure that the principal can be recovered.

So a pawnshop with little capital will definitely not make a lot of money. But it is not easy for a pawnshop with strong capital to lend funds to customers with good credit.

The more economically developed the area, the less the risk that the pawnshop will not be able to recover the funds, and the more economically underdeveloped the area, the greater the risk of opening a pawnshop, and even the risk of losing money.

Hu Guangyuan and his 27 pawnshops are located in Yangzhou, Suzhou, Songjiang, Jinling, Huzhou, Jiaxing, Hangzhou and other places with the most developed economy in the Ming Dynasty.

These areas are well developed, the merchants' capital is equally abundant, and their capital turnover period is not long, which is very suitable for these pawnshops to lend and lend, and they are the best customers in the pawnbroking industry.

Almost every one of these 27 pawnshops has several high-quality customers with good credit who can provide stable income for their pawnshops. Because of this, when Wang Feng contacted them at the beginning of the first year, they were not interested in taking a stake in this so-called bank.

First, they were worried that the imperial court would defraud them of their share capital in the name of a bank, and second, they felt that Wang Fengyuan wanted to insert his own business name into their territory in the name of establishing a bank.

Therefore, the pawnshops located in the richest areas of the Ming Dynasty did not respond to Wang Fengyuan's proposal, but privately formed an alliance, ready to jointly resist the entry of this bank into their own territory.

Hu Guangyuan's ideas are not wrong, in this era, merchants are the last business, and salt merchants and pawn shops are the lowest status among merchants.

Although they possessed great wealth, their political status was not as good as that of a homesteader. Therefore, once the businessmen in Jiangnan made a fortune, most of them would train their clansmen to study, or sponsor some talented children of poor families, and strive to make their families separate from simple business families.

However, it was precisely because the status of merchants was so low that the imperial court rarely interfered in commerce, and tried to let the merchants manage themselves.

In this social environment, even if the economy is as developed as the Jiangnan region, the merchant is still a very closed small society. Each industry had its own guild, and the merchants of each region had their own townspeople's guild.

The advantage of this is that once the government wants to get the merchants to contribute money to do some public welfare undertakings, or raise taxes or something, there will naturally be leading figures in the guild to come forward and fight for some benefits for everyone.

And businessmen who are away from home, when they come to an unfamiliar area to do business, they can also get the care of their fellow villagers, so as not to be bullied by local merchants.

But the downside is that the guilds and townsfolk guilds have a firm grip on small and medium-sized merchants, and once the share of commerce is determined, basically everyone else is excluded from the industry.

In other words, commercial competition is not only a competition for product price and quality, but also a distribution of benefits under the patriarchal system.

Like Hu Guangyuan, his 27 pawn shops, after a hard competition in business and interpersonal relations, eliminated the pawn industry of merchants from other regions and local merchants in these big cities south of the Yangtze River.

Just as others prevented them from entering, they can now make rules that prevent others from entering the area covered by their pawn shop and compete with them.

Hu Guangyuan: They had a very good idea, but the development of events soon exceeded their expectations. As an experienced pawnshop businessman, almost as soon as the bank was established, Wang Fengyuan set his sights on Yangzhou, Suzhou, Songjiang, Jinling, Huzhou, Jiaxing, Hangzhou, Shaoxing, Ningbo and other famous cities in the south of the Yangtze River.

Tong Chongzhen focused on the layout of the whole country, and first established bank outlets in two capitals and thirteen provinces, so as to build a preliminary financial network, so that the wealth of the Ming Dynasty could flow smoothly through the banking network.

Wang Fengyuan believes that first of all, banks should be allowed to take root in the richest Jiangnan region, and instead of mobilizing funds nationwide, mobilizing funds in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Nanzhili is the cheapest, the shortest time, and the most lucrative.

There are hundreds of large and small towns in these three regions, and there are more than 3 cities with a population of more than 500,000, and more than half of the wealth of the Ming Dynasty is accumulated in this area. As long as this place is controlled, the Daming Central Bank can quickly become a towering tree.

Wang Fengyuan originally thought that he would have to spend a lot of money to convince the representatives of the bank, the household department and the emperor. However, although Chongzhen has some ideas about the bank's planning, he has no intention of interfering in the bank's internal work arrangements, and he has too many things to do, so he really has no time to be distracted.

The representatives of the household department in the bank are only concerned about whether the bank can provide timely funds to make the food system under the household name functional.

As for the ministers on behalf of the emperor, although they are urging the bank to develop according to the plan on behalf of the emperor, it is obvious that they are more concerned about whether the bank can make a profit as soon as possible.

After the reform of the imperial village, the income in the palace was much less. Although the various workshops under the name of the palace made good profits, those profits were invested in expanding production. Maybe in a few years, these workshops will become hens that lay golden eggs, but now they are just chicks.

The eunuchs in the palace have no children and no daughters, and if they don't get the task of outsourcing, they can only eat the imperial food honestly. There are more items in the palace, everyone has more money, and when there are fewer items, everyone does not dare to complain, after all, the current emperor is not easy to mess with.

Wang Fengyuan put forward the proposal of laying out in Jiangnan first, and those ministers did not feel that there was anything wrong, and they could think of making the bank profitable as soon as possible, which was really a sign of loyalty. As for delaying other places a little, it doesn't mean that they are going against Chongzhen's intentions.

Doesn't delaying construction mean not building, and where the conditions are ripe, we will do it first, and then where the conditions are immature. Isn't this what Your Majesty said, to use materialism to guide our work?

After some operation, the human and material resources of the Daming Central Bank have been greatly tilted towards the Jiangnan region.

In just three months, Hu Guangyuan, a Huizhou businessman who ran a pawn shop, realized that the bank was really their enemy.

These high-quality customers in the hands of pawnshops are also high-quality customers that banks are trying to strive for.

In addition to offering low interest rates, banks also provide a kind of credit guarantee that allows these merchants to complete transactions without using cash.

This not only greatly reduces the bank's reserve requirements, but also reduces trade costs and transaction times for those merchants.

Relying on the credit of the imperial court, the banks soon snatched their most valuable customers, and the rest were extremely risky objects.

Although the combined financial strength of their twenty-seven pawnshops is enough to overwhelm the newly established Daming Central Bank.

They could even send a central bank that expands too quickly into a run if they want to, but they can only think about it.

The pawnbroking industry in Ningbo and Shaoxing is a circle that even Huizhou merchants can't squeeze into, and the pawnbroking industry here is firmly controlled by local merchants.

When the Central Bank of the Ming Dynasty set up branches in both places, the local merchants were prepared to teach these outsiders a lesson and make them quit the industry of their own accord.

Several pawn shops in Ningbo joined forces to mortgage 12 1-kilogram golden Buddhas to the Ningbo branch of the Central Bank of Daming for several days, and they also boasted complacently that they had prepared 300 golden Buddhas until the Ningbo branch closed automatically.

Then when everyone was ready to watch the excitement, the proprietors behind these pawn shops were quickly invited by the government to talk. No one knew what they were talking about, but after these proprietors came out, they took the initiative to deposit 1 million taels of silver into the Ningbo branch, and publicly stated that the Daming Central Bank has outstanding credit and is a trustworthy bank.

Things changed so suddenly that businessmen who wanted to watch a good show fell into their eyes. However, this incident shocked many pawn shops who were dissatisfied with the bank, and made them understand that it was not feasible to deal with the central bank of the Ming Dynasty with off-market tricks.

Hu Guangyuan and other 27 pawnshops could not sit idly by, and their own business was swallowed up by this bank. After they discussed for a long time, they decided to rely on the conditions of being fellow villagers in Huizhou to let Wang Fengyuan share their share of the soup.

Before going to Beijing, Hu Guangyuan and others discussed that the best condition was to get 51% of the equity, as long as they could get the right to be in charge of the bank, plus some silver.

The minimum requirement is also to exchange for 45% of the equity, although you can't get the right to take charge of the bank, but if you step into it first, it is not impossible to turn around.

With the rapid development of the bank in the Jiangnan area, this business will not suffer a loss, who let them make a mistake in the first judgment and did not join the bank's preparation in the first place.

But the 25% stake given by Wang Fengyuan completely shattered their ideas. However, this is the end of the day, everyone returns home, and the pawn business in Jiangnan will be handed over to others in the future.

Having given up the pawnshop business, what should their family and the servants who served their family live in the future? The people standing in the courtyard all had a layer of gloom in their hearts.