Although the sense of déjà vu was strong, after Huang He's brief explanation, Albert understood the technical data of the vacuum high-speed train held by the Jiangnan Group, especially the construction costs, and quickly grasped the meaning behind this technology.
This meant that Jiangnan's vacuum high-speed railway would be even cheaper to build than traditional high-speed railways, and most importantly, there would be no land acquisition costs. It only required digging underground and finding some uninhabited land to build ground stations, making land acquisition costs almost zero.
Such a train was undoubtedly an angelic technology for Europe, where every inch of land was precious. It could reduce construction costs by more than half while increasing train speeds by several times. It was a technology that only a fool would refuse.
Albert could imagine that once the Jiangnan Group released this technology to the public, the entire European, no, the entire world's railway market would be dominated by the Jiangnan Group. No other company could snatch away market share in the high-end railway sector from the Jiangnan Group.
At the very least, European countries would be clamoring for the Jiangnan Group to build railways for them. After all, Europe's railway network was already very old. However, if new high-speed railways were to be built, acquiring land from farmers and city residents would become an extremely troublesome issue for all governments. The fully underground vacuum high-speed railway would completely solve these problems.
After understanding these matters, Albert looked at Huang He with the enthusiasm of seeing gold, and Albert believed that Huang He would definitely cooperate with him.
The reason was simple: the videos and technical data provided by Huang He were absolutely confidential. Even the Rothschild family's intelligence network could not uncover these secrets, yet Huang He had proactively presented them to him.
Was Huang He showing off?
Please, they weren't three-year-old children to do such a boring thing. Huang He was clearly doing this for a reason. He was using this as leverage to invite the Rothschild family to cooperate and jointly develop the European market.
Albert was very astute, and his guess was completely correct. This was Huang He's objective, and Huang He was indeed eager to expand the European market for vacuum high-speed railways.
Therefore, while the largest vacuum high-speed railway market was undoubtedly the domestic market, Jiangnan Transportation, after its restructuring, had almost become a state-owned enterprise. The Jiangnan Group could only retain a 10% stake. Moreover, this 10% stake would certainly not be profitable in the early stages. After all, in line with China's traditions, when it came to infrastructure involving public interest, there was always an emphasis on investing without regard to cost, then providing services to all citizens at low prices. If the aim was to profit from charging fees, it would likely take twenty years.
In fact, China's high-speed rail had been under construction for over a decade, and as of 2022, it had not achieved profitability and was still operating at a loss. While there were some unspoken reasons for this, the main one was that high-speed rail ticket prices had to remain affordable for ordinary people, making profitability consistently difficult.
Of course, he would not let the Jiangnan Group bear the losses. However, it would be absolutely impossible for the Jiangnan Group to receive dividends from its 10% stake in Jiangnan Transportation. And selling this 10% stake would also be impossible, as these shares were a treasure that could not be bought back at any price in the future.
Although the initial investment of 60 billion in research and development expenses would be recouped by selling 90% of Jiangnan Transportation's shares, allowing the Jiangnan Group to recover its initial costs.
But Huang He would never be satisfied if he didn't earn a single cent from the vacuum high-speed railway he had painstakingly created.
Therefore, after discussing with the newly established Jiangnan Transportation board, Jiangnan Transportation decided to outsource all overseas development and construction rights for the vacuum high-speed railway to the newly established Jiangnan International Transportation Company by the Jiangnan Group, allowing the Jiangnan Group to sell the vacuum high-speed railway worldwide. Of the profits earned, Jiangnan International Transportation would only hand over a symbolic 10% of net profit to Jiangnan Transportation, with the remaining 90% of profits belonging to Jiangnan International Transportation itself.
As a result, developing vacuum high-speed railways abroad became a business that the Jiangnan Group had to operate with full effort.
Similar to the maglev train market, only a few countries worldwide could afford the construction costs of vacuum high-speed railways. China was out of the question. As for India, Boss Huang knew what a huge quagmire it was.
There was no problem promoting products in India, but expecting to undertake infrastructure projects in India was definitely courting death.
Japan was too xenophobic to accept foreign companies undertaking infrastructure projects in their country.
Russia had no issues, but they had no money.
Finally, only the United States and the European Union remained.
Given the current relationship between the Jiangnan Group and Goldman Sachs, it was temporarily impossible to build vacuum high-speed railways in the United States. Therefore, by comparison, the only possibility was the European Union.
However, even for the only possible option, the European Union, the difficulty was extremely high.
After all, the European Union also had its pride, the pride of the noble Anglo-Saxons. How could they accept the foolish yellow race teaching them how to build railways?
Not to mention that they had the American Daddy behind them. As long as Daddy frowned slightly, not only would the project not have started, but even if it were completed, it might not be able to proceed and would be abandoned to become scrap metal.
It was like a newly completed oil pipeline that instantly turned into scrap metal, seemingly unable to be activated for a lifetime.
Therefore, if the Jiangnan Group wanted to undertake such large-scale infrastructure projects in Europe, in addition to obtaining the support of various national governments, it also needed the support of a force with enormous economic influence in Europe. The best choice for this support became the Rothschild family.
This powerful force that could control all of Europe from behind the scenes could also ignore numerous difficulties, vigorously promote the entire vacuum high-speed railway project, and ensure its smooth operation.
This was also why Huang He handed over this highly confidential video to Albert. It was because Boss Huang also had something to ask for.
Since both parties had needs, negotiations naturally began.
Initially, both sides offered very high terms. After communicating with his grandfather, Albert directly proposed to buy all of the Jiangnan Group's vacuum high-speed railway technical data and exclusive agency rights in Europe for 2 billion Euros.
2 billion Euros sounded like a lot, but compared to the complete technology of the vacuum high-speed railway, it was a joke.
Of course, the Jiangnan Group's terms were also a joke: the Rothschild family would be responsible for helping the Jiangnan Group facilitate infrastructure construction in Europe, and in return, they would receive 1.5% of the total profit as an intermediary fee.
1.5% of total profit sounded like a lot, as any single order would certainly be worth tens of billions or even hundreds of billions of Euros, and 1.5% would amount to hundreds of millions. The Rothschild family could earn this fee just by speaking, which was great.
But the problem was that Huang He's terms were based on total profit, not total sales. Who knew how much profit a completed order would yield? What if the accounting at the end showed a negative profit, and the Rothschilds would have to subsidize it?
In any case, both sides presented terms that the other absolutely could not accept. However, both sides understood that this was just a process of asking for the sky and settling for the ground. After half a month of continuous negotiations, both sides' terms finally reached a critical point.
First, both parties could shift from simple agency or simple profit sharing to establishing a joint venture company to jointly manage the operation of vacuum high-speed railways throughout Europe, and then both parties would jointly earn profits from the company.
However, they still couldn't agree on the shareholding. The Rothschild family stated that they must hold at least 49% of the shares, and they did not accept technology investment from Jiangnan International Transportation, meaning that the vacuum high-speed train technology would not be integrated as equity. Instead, Jiangnan International Transportation had to provide actual capital to acquire company shares.
As for the vacuum high-speed train technology, it would be given to the company for free.
The Jiangnan Group's condition was that the Jiangnan Group must hold at least 70% of the company's shares, and the vacuum high-speed train technology itself would be equivalent to 30% of the company's shares. The remaining 70% of the shares would be paid in cash, with every 10% equivalent to 1 billion Euros in capital.
The gap between these two conditions was enormous. Firstly, the Rothschild family believed that if technology investment was to be valued, then their vast network of contacts in Europe must also be counted as equity investment, otherwise, it would be unfair.
Secondly, the Jiangnan Group's 70% share was too high, and the profits the Rothschild family could obtain were too low, making it seem like they were just serving the Jiangnan Group, which was absolutely unacceptable.
Both sides engaged in arduous negotiations for a week around this point, but there was no progress. However, both sides were very calm.
After all, for such major investments involving tens or even hundreds of billions of Euros, it was normal to negotiate for four to five years, let alone a month.
In any case, it would take at least ten years for the vacuum high-speed train to be operational. Everyone had time to drag it out. As long as negotiations could continue, that was fine, because who knew what would happen in the future!
Although both sides had not reached a clear agreement in the negotiations, the entire process was actually quite pleasant. The most important thing was that both sides knew that cooperation was inevitable, and thus the relationship between the Jiangnan Group and the Rothschild family became warmer.
It was at this time that Goldman Sachs actively approached them. Huang He then proactively discussed the matter with the Rothschild family. After mutual consultation, the Rothschild family saw an opportunity to sell their useless traditional maglev train technology patents to a willing buyer, making cooperation a natural choice.
Thus, a deep pit was dug for the Goldman Sachs Group without anyone noticing, and Goldman Sachs Group, closing its eyes, jumped directly into it.