Investment expansion and Future

Max sat down on the leather couch with a smile as he set down his top hat beside him. On the other side of the dark-wood table, was Mr. Reginald, similarly seated on a leather couch. The atmosphere of the room was considerably calming due to all the warm colours used in the furniture and walls, as well as the distinct yellow light coming from the gas lamps near the top of the room.

"Welcome, Mr. Verstappen to my humble home."

"Please, Mr. Reginald, Call me Max. I am much younger than you think I am."

"… Alright then, Max. I would like to thank you for coming to meet me so early in the morning. Before we started tell me, what would you have? Tea? Coffee?"

"I'll have just plain milk." He replied with a straight face, a reply which caused Mr. Reginald's face to twitch ever-so-slightly.

Still, he nodded and got up, went to the next room before returning with a glass of milk and a glass of water for himself.

After seeing Mr. Reginald sit down, Max took a curtesy sip of the milk before placing it back onto the table and smiling as the man in front of him.

"Alright then. Let us get down to business. As you should already know, my business is Florence House which is an auction house that is considerably famous in the circles of the elites and nobles of Backlund."

"But your earnings are not consistent enough for your own living expenses, or for the expenses of the business. You need a reliable source of odd items in order to be able to sell more items more often; one that does not have a chance of selling you fraudulent items and at a reliably consistent pace. Is that correct?" Max finished his sentence.

"… that is true. However, I am also interested in the company you have ownership of. Dunant's Department store if I am not mistaken."

"Yes," Max nodded before smiling, "The department store often receives miscellaneous items of possible high worth, and I feel like it would be beneficial for both companies to establish a supply contract where we supply you with random items we come across for a price that is acceptable to both parties, while you can sell it for whatever you want. Alternatively, you could just take our items and sell them, giving us back most of the earnings and only keeping a small fee for your Florence house. But I am getting ahead of myself here. First and foremost, I can tell you that there are two other stakeholders in the Dunant's Department store, and I have already discussed with them about this meeting and I can honestly say that I represent all of them, including myself. As such, I represent the entire Dunant's Department store for this discussion. What about you?" 

"…I suppose it is not some secret. The Florence House is split in ownership. 10% is with my younger brother who helped me source the land to build the auction house. But he aways listens to me, so I suppose I can also represent the Florence House."

'I wouldn't be so sure…' Max internally mocked as he had seen many familial relationships being torn apart due to greed. In fact, the wealthier and more comfortable lives humans had, the worse their actions would be towards those of their own family and close friends. For those struggling at the bottom, generally the family would stick together through thick and thin, except for extreme cases where people give up on life by drinking or smoking, or worse, physically give up.

Either way, since Mr. Reginald owned 90% of the company, he could indeed represent it.

"Alright. Mr. Reginald, I have a few deals to make with you, so let us get right to it!"

…

Max left Mr. Reginald's house with two signed documents. One of them was a contract of purchase where the Florence House would purchase any and all sufficiently intriguing items from Dunant's Department Store. 

The prices for all categories of items were listed in the contract itself in a table, along with conditions that would make the price rise or fall and by how much as well. Everything was very well written in the contract, and Max had to pay a considerable sum to Mr. Eckhart to get him to write it all out.

Still, Max was sure it was actually Brenda who had written it, and Mr. Eckhart was just reading through it to confirm it before giving it to Max, but this was exactly what he had paid for. The proofreading done by this senior lawyer was well worth it.

The second contract Max had was a much more private deal. It involved an exchange of stakes. As it turned out, Mr. Reginald had already gotten a written and signed authorisation letter from his younger brother who allowed him to dilute the shares of the company in order to give some stake to Max, without changing the ownership structure between the two brothers. 

As such, Max had gotten 20% of the Florence House, with Mr. Reginald's brother owning 8% and Mr Reginald owning 72%. Meanwhile, for Dunant's Department Store, Max's 33% stake was reduced to 30% with the remaining 3% being given to the Florence House as ownership in exchange for Max's 20%. Meanwhile, Mrs. Dunant's stake did not reduce more than her previous 27% and Ms. Hall's stake also did not reduce more than 40%.

The exchange of 3% for 20% might seem unfair, but considering how much the current financial statements differed between the two companies, it was actually a rather palatable deal. Perhaps someone with a narrower view and more cutthroat attitude might have only given 1% for a 20% stake, but Max wanted to keep the two brothers satisfied with him. 

Plus, he had a vision of the potential of such an auction house and wanted it to reach its future potential.

For this, Max had also specified many things to Mr. Reginald, many of them making a lot of sense to him, including the fact that they should improve the quality of clothing and furniture of the Auction House. Of course, Max had also visited the auction house that was just around the corner while the two were still discussing the deal.

One of the important factors that Max had asked was whether the auction house was built by them on land that they bought or just a building that he had rented. Thankfully, it turned out that they had rented it, and that was something Max was greatly satisfied with. After all, the deadly fog of doom that would be unleashed onto Backlund by certain individuals and groups would utterly destroy the finances of Backlund in the short term, and owning any land before this period of time was stupid. In fact, shoring up money in order to purchase land right after the disaster, would be the best way for him to gain a lot of land, which was one of the most important aspects of wealth to human society, since the beginning of civilisation itself.

Till this time, however, Max would have to rapidly grow his businesses and prepare a large amount of money before the incident, in order to quickly make use of it to make specific purchases in the Backlund. 

And this was exactly what Max was intending to do. Now, he would sit back and collect money from his businesses while making connections in the higher circles of Leon and Backlund, and then invest the money into more investments to get more money.

In just a few months, his financial backing should have become considerably stronger, and this would be further boosted if he was able to take a loan from a bank, Max would try to do this, since the alternative to this was to either sit back and passively collect money, or create a company and sell the shares to someone.

But that would be giving up control over his wealth to someone else, and Max did not have the bad habit of giving out his own power. Max had seen enough cases both in real life and in movies, novels, and comics to know that giving up a share of your own power, be it in the form of equity of your company or the secrets to your powers, always ended up in ruin. The only reason those protagonists survived stupid decisions like this was purely due to the whims of their author and the so-called plot armour.

Clearly, Max was not one. The only protagonist in this world was Klein, and perhaps a certain goddess. Maybe… the true protagonist of the entire story was a certain angel who was the reincarnation of an even more overpowering god who had lived through all Epochs…

But that was a tale for another time…