Chương 126: Book 4 - Chapter 12 A

I grinned as Jennifer looked out the windows of the San Diego house. The tide was in, and the waves were crashing against the seawall just below the office.

"A bit more exciting than OneOK in Tulsa, isn't it," I said.

"It's unique," she said before slipping her slim form into a chair at the table. I looked around at the attentive group. Matt, back from his vacation was looking relaxed. Tim was alert and ready, and Jennifer was in her usual brilliant mode of all business.

"First, I want to review my current holdings. I need to know exactly what I'm worth," I told the table.

"Let's start with Euro Motors," Jennifer suggested. Tim rapidly flipped through the folder in front of him, though he could likely quote the figures from memory.

"You still have a 20 percent stake. That's increased over the past two years by 300 percent. It's currently valued at $11 billion."

"Who have they acquired since then?" I asked. He looked at his notes again.

"Lotus, Alfa Romeo, Jaguar, Maserati and the Spanish SEAT. That last one has been critical in driving down production costs for the most common parts across the company." I nodded, and wrote 11 billion on the page in front of me.

"Okay, what's next?" I asked.

"Corning," Jennifer said.

"It's become one of the most valuable companies in the world with its exclusive rights to the building blocks of modern industry." Tim pulled out a thin folder.

"You have 20 percent of the company. Its value is somewhere around $80 billion, but with graphene fiber rolling out into the construction industry it's expected to triple in the next five years. Graphene fiber reinforced concrete is a revolutionary game changer for the construction industry." I did the math and wrote $16 billion on my sheet of paper.

"Your Corning stock increases," Jennifer added, "when the orders for GrFRC go over 2 billion a year. When that happens, you'll have 25 percent."

"What I have now is what's important," I told her. Seeing what I was doing, Jennifer moved on to the next item.

"TWP Media. What's it worth today, Tim?" He shuffled folders again, then yelped in surprise as Max joined us, leaping on to the table from somewhere above. He padded over to me for pets then climbed into my lap for a nap. Despite being curled up his long legs hung past the bottom of my chair.

"Meet Max," Matt chuckled.

"Was that a baby cheetah?" Jennifer asked, as Max disappeared below the table.

"My new house cat," I said.

"He's the newest cat breed, a Savannah. There are only three in the world. I'm training him as a guard cat."

"He is!" Matt insisted to the unbelieving looks.

"He's got an attack dummy upstairs he trains it against."

"That seems a little eccentric, John," Jennifer said.

"It's just a hobby," I said, as I continued to pet the now deeply purring cat. The deep vibration made my rib cage hum, and sounded like a boat was passing by the windows outside. Jennifer shook her head, and motioned to Tim.

"Go ahead, Tim. We'll just work through the noise." Tim gathered himself and opened another folder.

"TWP Media is worth about $95 billion. You've sold off some shares, to fund the LTV acquisition, so your remaining 40 percent stake is worth $38 billion." I added that to my sheet.

"What about Apple?" I asked.

"It's not worth much in comparison," Tim said.

"You're the largest individual stakeholder, but it's only worth half a billion."

"That will change eventually," I commented.

"So what's next?"

"General Atomics," Jennifer said. Tim broke into a big smile.

"This I know by heart," he said, but pulled out the folder anyway.

"Because it's private it's harder to pin down. But between the LTV purchase and now Chris-Craft industrial plastics, GA has become a prime contractor, right up there with Boeing and Lockheed. You've vertically integrated the materials needed for all of the manufacturing under GA. The new announcements from GA about the Fusion project is something I can't quite quantify in regards to future value, but World Business News says that they effectively own the future of the sun on earth."

"Don't count on fusion," I told him.

"It'll be many decades before it can compete economically or safely with ISPBR. Now what is the value of GA?" If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

"$55 billion. That's 100 percent yours," he said with a smile. I added $55 to my sheet of paper.

"What about my tin mines?"

"On paper they are worth around 1. 5 to 1. 7 billion, up from the 250 million you bought them for," Jen answered, making Tim's eyes go up. This wasn't part of my portfolio that he handled.

"We're up to 32, 000 tons a year," I told her.

"I'm expecting 35, 000 next year."

"At 3, 000 a ton to produce, you're looking at spending 48 million more this year to store it all in Nevada," Jen said.

"What percentage would I need to sell to break even for the rest of 1989?" I asked her.

"Tin is at 12, 500 a ton, if you sold 24% you'd get to keep the rest all for free," she said.

"I'm not adding in the mines," I said.

"I'm just curious about their value."

"Do you want to start moving the tin?" Jen asked.

"You've got over 120, 000 tons in storage."

"Definitely not, but keep an eye on my income from Corning and elsewhere," I told her.

"If it starts to look like I don't have enough positive cash for the rest of the year then you can start to sell some of the new production from the tin mines to remove that expense, but no more than enough to break even. I need every ton I can get for the future." I looked up at Jack and motioned for him to bring in my guest.

"This is Mr Droust from the White House, he has paperwork for you to sign, before we take the conversation further," I told them as the older white haired man entered with a handful of papers. He silently handed them out and Jennifer began to aggressively read the documents.

"This looks like a security clearance, but it's oddly specific," she said as she reached the end. Matt had already signed his, and handed it back to Mr Droust who looked it over, and slid it into his attache bag. Tim was waiting for Jennifer.

"Go ahead and sign. It's the only way we know his big secret," she said. Tim waited for her to sign completely, before he did the same, handing the paperwork to Mr Droust who gathered it into his bag. He started to leave the room, when Tim spoke up.

"Aren't you staying for the secret?" he asked Mr Droust. He turned briefly with an awkward smile.

"It's not something I'm authorized to know. I'm just handling the paperwork," he said, and moved into the elevator to return to the upper house. When we were alone again I gave them all a look.

"I need to turn my holdings into cash, without relinquishing them. How do I do that?" I asked to a stunned Jennifer and Tim.

"The bond market is out of the question," Jennifer replied after a moments thought.

"It still hasn't recovered. When it comes to asset backed loans, GA won't qualify. It needs to be something with solid financial numbers, like your stock holdings."

"So a Senior Secured Bridge Loan?" Tim asked her in wonder at the funds being discussed.

"Yes. But it's not something one bank can handle," she said, then focused on me.

"Tell me John, what are you buying now? A small country? The Moon?" she asked heatedly.

"I want to acquire ARCO and take it private," I said.

"What?" she responded.

"Why would you still want to do that? They already said no when you asked before." I scratched out the $55 billion from GA on the sheet in front of me, and totaled the amounts up, $65. 5 billion. It would barely be enough. I opened up the folder that had been sitting in front of me the whole meeting and passed out a copy of the two pages describing my secret project to each of them. Jennifer finished first, Matt came last. No one spoke as they digested the future.

"This is why you told me to try to buy ARCO before?" Jennifer asked.

"It is. I can produce the fuel, but if the industry decides I'm a threat, they can choose not to buy it. I have to have distribution in place that I can control. It breaks the cycle, and turns my competitors into customers instead of adversaries. They might not like it, but they'll buy it just to stay competitive."

"Twenty million gallons of gasoline a day? Does the country even use that much?" Matt asked.

"For just gasoline, it is about triple what Washington State uses in a day. That is just the initial production from the new Satsop Nuclear Power Plant. I'll need to build other plants around the country to produce other fuel types. Diesel, AV gas, etcetera. Those will be a combination of ISPBR and Solar Thermal. The goal is a complete shift to SynFuels over the next five years in the US."

"I see why the White House is overseeing security," Jennifer said.

"If this got out, you'd be an instant target."

"You may have noticed that security has ramped up their protection of me," I told her.

"It is part of my agreement with the President."

"This is too dangerous, John," she insisted.

"You're risking everything you own to buy a company to sell something that the country already has plenty of."

"I'm going to mitigate the risk. I'll sell all the plants as I build them. I'll only charge a royalty on production."

"Jesus Christ!" Tim blurted out. The man had a head for numbers, and had done the math.

"What kind of royalty are you planning on charging?"

"Twenty five cents a gallon." He quickly made some notes, then looked me in the eye.

"I don't know the exact figure, but that's around 500 million gallons a day across all uses and fuel types. The entire US economy is built on liquid hydrocarbons." He looked at everybody else then up at the ceiling in disbelief.

"That's 125 million dollars each day in income. John! That's more than $45 billion a year in pure income. Where do you put it all to keep from destabilizing the economy?"

"For the most part it will sit in the bank," I told him.

"After it buys back my mortgaged stocks." I looked out the window at the sea that seemed to go on forever.

"As I roll it out globally, the owners of the new plants will pay the same royalty, converted into whatever equivalent currency they want to pay. For most places it is going to mean a drop in prices and a corresponding heating up of the economy. Holding on to the cash for the first few years, or sticking it in new places, helps cool the effect. I'll also use it to buy up debt, or offer loans to increase global liquidity as a further economic lever.

My agreement with Bush is a significant tax to bring it up to near the price of regular gasoline, and fund the reduction of the national debt instead of new income taxes."