Chapter 1588: 1588. Sea Auction
Back in the United States, the flight landed in New York. Li Du contacted Cole and asked him to help find two outstanding jade carving masters. He wanted to carve something.
It was very simple for Cole. Li Du was not short of money. He contacted two well-known engravers from New York, and they rushed to accept the employment immediately after hearing the price.
So at the beginning of the new year, Li Du got busy here.
He has a small plan to implement, and finding an engraver is only the first step in the implementation of the plan, and then he has to prepare to go home for the New Year. In addition, there are people in the two industries of storage auction and bidding real estate waiting for him to make a final decision.
Bill had arranged for him a storage auction that he had to attend, a rare auction at sea.
As the name suggests, the sea auction is naturally held at sea. Li Du does not participate in ordinary auctions, but he is very interested in this sea auction. First, it is novel and second, it is of great value.
In the warehouse auction industry, the top one is war auctions. For example, when the Iraq War ended, the US military retreated from Iraq, leaving behind a large amount of supplies.
Most of these materials are war waste and the like, not worth transporting later, but they cannot be thrown away for nothing, so the U.S. Department of Defense will organize a storage auction.
But this kind of auction is rare in a few years. Even ordinary people dare not intervene. War auctions are controlled by arms companies, military contractors, violent teams and some underworld organizations.
Excluding war auctions, the second most valuable are the property clearance auctions organized by government public service departments or customs organizations in the United States. Among the auctions organized by customs organizations, container auctions are the most important.
Every year, there are some unclaimed containers and goods in various customs offices. When these things are collected, a grand auction will be held.
A sea auction is similar to a container auction because the things it auctions are also in containers, that is, the shipping company goes bankrupt, or for some reason a ship cannot dock, and the goods on the ship become ownerless, the ship owner, the government and the insurance company The company will host an auction.
This kind of auction started in the 1970s and 1980s, and the earliest millionaires among the treasure hunters came from it, making a fortune through container auctions.
But auctions at sea are very rare. After all, it is very rare for a shipping company to go bankrupt, and it is even rarer for the goods to be directly thrown at sea after the shipping company goes bankrupt.
The last offshore auction was seven or eight years ago. In 2008, the global financial crisis hit the shipping industry hard, and many small shipping companies went bankrupt.
At that time, there was a boom in auctions at sea, and so far, thousands of club treasure hunters from all over the world have taken advantage of that opportunity to appear.
Entering the tens of millions of clubs by means of warehouse auctions, the difficulty of this kind of thing is terrifying, but there are still more than 20 related members in the United States. They rely not only on their strength, but also on their luck, to be able to encounter such a large auction.
Now, Li Du has come across one.
Just this year, Hanmao Group, the largest shipping company in South Korea and one of the top ten shipping companies in the world, went bankrupt. This shipping company has more than 200 container ships, bulk carriers and liquefied natural gas ships. Its fleet operates 60 ships worldwide. A number of regular and non-scheduled routes transport hundreds of millions of tons of cargo to all parts of the world every year.
With the downturn in the shipping market, the situation of major shipping companies around the world is relatively bad, among which Hanmao Group is the most miserable.
Although there are more than 200 ships, only half of these ships can actually be used for shipping. Among the half of the ships that can be used for shipping, less than 40 ships belong to Hanmao Group, and the rest are leased.
The shipping industry is very expensive. It is much more crazy to maintain a ship than to maintain an aircraft. The maintenance of a ship costs millions of dollars. If there is a problem and needs to be repaired, it will cost more money!
In addition, the cost of fuel for a long voyage is sky-high. In order to maintain the safety of shipping, some routes are controlled by violent organizations, and shipping companies have to spend money to buy safety.
All in all, in the first half of last year, Hanmao Group lost a total of 3 trillion won, or more than 2 billion US dollars. It started to lose money the year before, and the loss last year that just ended was even more terrifying. Finally, it could not sustain it and filed for bankruptcy protection.
The bankruptcy information of this kind of super enterprise is very secretive. They are listed groups. In order to maintain the stock price, the group has been swollen and fat before submitting the bankruptcy application to the court to prevent stockholders from panic selling stocks. Otherwise, I am afraid that they will not survive. When it came to bankruptcy protection, it collapsed directly.
Therefore, when Hanmao Group filed for bankruptcy, there were still many routes in operation, and many ships were still sailing at sea.
As soon as the bankruptcy news came out, Hanmao Group immediately tore up its face and began to show the bottomless, unscrupulous, and shameless style of the Han Mingzu. They just ignored the ships at sea!
Before these ships sailed, they did not fill up with fuel and water at one time. They all went to a transit point for maintenance and replenishment.
When the Hanmao Group went bankrupt, no one gave them money for refueling, water and supplies, so some ships could not move at sea...
In fact, we can't completely blame the Hanmao Group for being cold-blooded. They really have no money, and they can't even pay for the tugboat.
In addition, due to the bankruptcy of the Hanmao Group, most ports around the world have refused their ships to berth at the port. As a result, a large number of goods are still trapped overseas or at ports, causing large-scale delivery delays.
Due to various reasons, twenty or thirty cargo ships of the Hanmao Group are now trapped outside the port, some of which are close to the port, and the insurance company hired a ship to bring the goods back after paying the compensation.
There are also ships in the open sea, and it would be too expensive to bring back the goods on them. In order to reduce the impact of delivery delays and financial pressure caused by Hanmao Group, the value of the goods transported on some ships was low, so insurance The company is not interested in spending a lot of money to handle the goods.
At this time, the warehouse auction industry came in handy. The insurance company hosted the auction and invited treasure hunters from all over the United States to participate.
Those who can participate in this auction are not ordinary treasure hunters. The insurance company has smartly verified their assets. Basically, those whose assets are less than one million are rejected.
Bill told Li Du that all the members of the Million Club and Ten Million Club will participate in this auction, and it will be a competition of super masters.
Because the freighter was docked in the far sea area, Li Du couldn't do his homework in advance this time, so he had to gather enough energy to investigate the situation well.
The auction will be held in the second month after the insurance company completes the compensation for the ship.
They issued an invitation letter to each participant in advance. After accepting the invitation letter, the insurance company will give a code, and you can go to their website to obtain information about the auction.