八字万年历

Chapter 360: A Pirate of Fortune II

“Surely you don’t mean yourself, do you?” Maya Singh returned a question to Jason, amused by this young man.

“Oh, me? Surely not,” Jason laughed.

“I’m a shark, a pirate of fortune… a calculated risk-taker if you will,” he continued, his wicked smile growing wider by the second.

“I’m the oriole behind the mantis stalking the cicada… only this time, I don’t wish for the mantis to kill the cicada as that cicada has the potential to be something greater,” Jason stated.

“Where are you going with this?” Maya Singh asked Jason because as amused as she was by his words, they seemed to have a meaning behind them and Maya wasn’t patient enough to wait for Jason to continue talking at his own pace.

“Due to your company’s previous misfortunes, your investors lost faith in your vision and most of them pulled out, leaving you with most of your company’s stake but nothing to show for it. In fact, that was what had accelerated your plunge as you had to sell a lot of your assets to settle those people so that you could avoid the situation where your competitors get a stake in your company,”

“Hence, you have no extra funds which is why you can’t launch your new product… but what if…”

“What if you could launch the new product earlier than planned?… by, let’s say next month?” Jason asked with a grin.

“Highly improbable, but if we can launch the new product earlier and it can make a big splash in the market, then we will be well on our way to recovery and maybe even growth,” Maya Singh responded, half-heartedly.

She was not one to expect sudden strokes of good fortune, especially in their current situation, so she hadn’t given it much thought and had kept her thinking realistic so far.

“What if you received enough money in cash flow to help with your efforts to save your company from the inevitable fall?” Jason asked another question, but unlike before when Maya Singh had replied half-heartedly, hearing Jason’s words this time had caused her to pause and raise an eyebrow.

“And who’s going to want to do such a thing?” Maya Singh asked with her eyebrow raised.

What Jason was asking was a question she had asked herself quite a few times in the past.

As someone who had seen a lot of things, she knew that money could solve almost every issue in the business world and if it could not, it was because you were not throwing enough money at the problem.

If there was someone with enough money to spare who wanted to save Skin Serenity, then they would be able to do it easily.

With enough money, they could help Skin Serenity hire lead researchers who could help them create a few new recipes to sell.

With enough money, they could launch these new products.

With enough money, they could hire famous people to help them whitewash their brand name, or they could just change their brand name altogether.

With enough money, there wasn’t anything they couldn’t do, but no sane businessman would put that much money into saving their company.

The money required to launch a new product wasn’t the problem, the problem was the whitewashing part which could cost hundreds of millions.

Rather, they would just let it go bankrupt, then they could acquire it at a low price and then probably turn it into a subsidiary of another much bigger brand, changing the name and all.

Hence, Maya Singh had long given up on receiving any monetary help from anyone as no such good Samaritan was willing to put that much money into saving a drowning company and she voiced her thoughts to Jason.

“Yes, if we received a few million in cash flow, we could offset our debt to buy us some time, and then launch a new product, but then we would still have to deal with the reputation aspect. It’s not impossible and it would make things a lot easier if we could get more money, but who’s going to give us that kind of money?”

“Unless there is that much of a significant benefit that can be gained from investing that much, then there is no one who would do so,” She said.

“What you think can happen is not important right now… What I’m asking is what you can do if you were given a chance?” Jason cut her off before she could go any further.

Maya Singh paused as Jason’s question resonated with her, and even though she still didn’t understand why he was asking all these questions, she decided to answer him anyway,

“… We can recover, and we can grow…” She stated confidently, her gaze firm and that was all Jason wanted to hear.

“Then let me make you an offer,” Jason began and held out his hand to Adele who immediately pulled out a document signing pad from her bag.

“$35 million in investment for a 50% stake in your company,” Jason stated and placed the signing pad in front of Maya Singh.

The already silent room seemed to become a lot quieter in an instant as soon as those words came out of his mouth.

“What are you talking about?” Maya Singh’s secretary said as she took up the document pad and opened it, while the rest of the Skin Serenity crowd could only stare at Jason in surprise.

The secretary quickly looked through the documents to see what was written and after a while, she passed the document pad to the lawyer among them.

“Boss… ” The lawyer passed the document to Maya Singh after looking through it as well and saw what was written in the document was no different from what Jason had said.

“… What is this?” Maya Singh asked as if she hadn’t been listening to what Jason had been saying so far.

“A contract… You sign it and you hand over 50% of your company’s stake to me, and you get $35 million in funding,” Jason repeated, his grin having reduced into a little smile at the corner of his lips.

“Simple, isn’t it?”