Roskov book 22, p.1
Roskov, Book 22, page 1
Ricky Roskov
Book 22
Copyright © Geoff Wolak
This book is a work of fiction, technically accurate in the detail of geographical locations, and the time period history. It is young adult romance, conspiracy and murder-mystery.
Time runs short
By time the Rasmussens had arrived in Corsica Candice and Jenny were already gone, and that was probably a good thing, definitely probably a good thing - to have fewer needy women to worry about, and my cock had enjoyed a rest for a few days.
The twins were soon naked on the beach and swimming, but they were distinctly pale compared to the other girls on the beach. Thing was, they needed a tan for the next photoshoot, an all-over tan, so they were soon face down on the towels as I applied sun cream.
But there were no dickheads on the beach for me to worry about, no muscle-bound British thugs to leer at my girls, just rich people, and people that also walked around naked.
Russel called me midday. ‘Barclays have released their figures a little early, and the share price has jumped twenty points already.’
‘Good, I have uses for the extra money. Let it settle, but I want profits taken - when you think it has peaked based on the news, and I want it all sold before October, ready for a mini-crash and the chance to buy the shares back.’
‘Often a mini-crash in October, sometimes a big crash. I’ll watch the chart and the momentum and take some profit day-by-day.’
‘Are their figures believable?’
‘They have to be, and be conservative, or they’d be in trouble with the bank regulator, but they claim to have massive investments with us, your name’s even mentioned in their report.
‘And they claim great success with the warm house mortgage fix, and that within six months we’ll have reduced their bad debt register to a quarter of what it was – which is true I guess.’
‘And the share price percentage gain … a year from now?’
‘I would say thirty percent, could be a bit higher. But we wait to see how the city reacts. What the figures mean, and the mood of the buyers, are two very different things; it’s the mood that pushes prices higher.’
‘Any luck with the commuter belt plans?’ I asked.
‘We have a man that knows property and knows London, and he now has a map with red marks all over it, several places visited already, and we just got an offer in on an old factory outside Caterham, and we could build a hundred quality apartments on the land.’
‘That’s what we need, but build a few affordable places as well. And by that I mean affordable to a young city highflyer, not your local bus driver.’
‘We can mix them up, one bed, two bed and three bed, sell half of them on day one. And we have a bid in to build new houses, a new estate outside of Epsom, a hundred houses or more.
‘And there’s a new rail halt outside of Watford, south side, be finished in six months, so we have bids in for land there, a mix of houses and apartments to be built.’
‘Good, sounds like we’re making some progress.’
‘I had a look at that street that Glen’s mate is developing – a day out in London, and about three hundred yards away is a block that just became empty, needs a shit load of work but is structurally sound. It has thirty-six modestly-poor apartments.’
‘Just what we need, to rent them to local workers not city executives. What about my fifty-percent mortgages for the city?’
‘The first big deal - a friend of Glen’s friend, is in progress, a company that wants to buy better offices. The offices are good quality, little work needs be done, and the buyer can afford the payments well enough.’
I told him, ‘If we were sneaky shits … we’d look at properties nearby, with a view to improving them and thereby forcing up the price of those initial offices a few years down the road.’
‘I’ll have someone take a look, and Glen’s mate can do that. Hang on.’
I waited.
He re-started, ‘I have the photo here … and … next to it is what looks like a shop on the ground floor and … shit apartments above it, but full of boxes it looks, storage for the shop below maybe.’
‘Make a bid for it, and we can convert the offices above to apartments or into decent offices. And if the shop became a coffee shop with bagels to sell it would help the office rental prices around it.’
‘It would. The talk in Leicester is all about the new hospital, and the resulting upwards pressure on house prices. Those with a house, which is most people, love the idea, the renters fear it a little.’
‘So … talk to my lettings lady, and have her offer all our renters a secured extension of a year, same rental prices as now, for … a hundred quid non-refundable deposit now.’
‘That would ease their minds, yes, I’ll chat to her today. And the council here is turning an old factory into starter units for new small start-up businesses, a shop or work unit below and offices above.’
‘Good, that’s what we need for job creation, just that we need a thousand of those around the damn country!’
‘Not much profit in it, unless we get the land cheap.’
‘Have someone look at that and do the numbers, rental income and some unit sales, places around the Midlands to start. If there is a margin, even a small one, we should be looking at it, especially if we have housing projects close by.’
‘Bill suggested that we do a chain of coffee shops ourselves that sell bread and cake.’
‘It’s the modern trend, so have the Swedish men do some figures and some research, along the lines of my wine bars, same format and survey staff basically.’
‘Margins are good if they’re positioned well, a busy street, and they can be open 24hrs a day,’ he pointed out.
‘Have them do the maths, and if you’re sure about the margin and benefits – the long term building value, then the funds could support a business that ran them. See if Coffee and Cake is copyrighted. Or find a name like it.’
‘Would we own the company?’
‘We could do, or just loan money to a private company as an investment. Better still, we would own the buildings and land – as an investment, they pay a modest rent to us.’
‘I’ll chat to the team. Oh, we have a bid in for a project to build a shit load of apartments here in Leicester, the old mental health hospital land out near Chatterly.’
‘I know it. How many apartments could it hold?’
‘Hundreds, but they’re building a new housing estate just five hundred yards away, a new petrol station, and a new superstore will be half a mile away.’
‘Sounds perfect, so we should go for a mix of quality and basic apartments, plenty of parking space. And from there to the new cancer hospital would be a twenty minute drive.’
‘Council is said to be falling over themselves to have the new hospital built here,’ he reported.
‘It would boost any city. Let me know about Barclays share price, a daily text to my phone while I’m down here.’
Call ended, and my phone trilled, Lord Gregory. ‘You seen the Barclays news?’
‘Just been discussing it. Are you a few quid better off?’
‘Quite a few quid, but I’ll hold the stock.’
‘Ditch it at the beginning of October, buy back after the dip.’
‘You … sure that there will be a dip?’
‘I get the intel from above.’
‘Ah. That’s the kind of intel you don’t argue with.’
‘So get ready for the dip and recovery, and … don’t forget my charity.’
‘I won’t forget.’
Ross Daniels called ten minutes later. ‘We gambled on Barclays when we saw the buying patterns, bought options, now selling, made a few million.’
‘Good, more money in the kitty.’
‘We have some stock as well, for the long term.’
‘There’ll be a dip in October, so my friends in high places tell me.’
‘We’ll be watching carefully,’ he assured me.
At the pool bar, I found Rolf and Ingrid. ‘Seen the Barclays news?’ I asked Rolf as I sat with them.
‘I just had a call, and it has jumped up, so we have made a good profit already.’
‘Keep it till October, sell, then buy back after the dip.’
He nodded. ‘The new computer business will need a loan,’ he told me, but he said it with some regret.
‘A full order book is not to be worried about, an empty one would be. But how about you partner with Ross Daniels, he’s controlling the computer imports anyhow.’
‘It would be a good partnership, so I will discuss this with my partners today. We either borrow money, we partner, or we scale back and stop advertising.’
‘If you can’t supply the interested customers … you’ll lose them forever, they’ll get their computers elsewhere.’
He seemed deflated as he stroked his trim grey beard. ‘Yes, a bad move to ignore good business.’
‘What about a fifty million Euro overdraft facility, for two years?’
‘That would depend on the interest rate.’
‘My lake valley business can loan you fifty million at zero percent interest, Lee Tong put in a hundred million or more recently, it’s just sat there.’ I held my hands wide.
‘That would be ideal, to keep it in the family.’
I made a call to my lake valley partner, but Lars controlled my bank; the money would be loaned today, an agreement drawn up.
Facing Rolf, I told him, ‘Problem solved, money used - not sat in the b
‘We use my good name whilst I have a good name, and we should do that before anyone else copies our rentals model.’
He nodded. ‘I will talk with them today.’
‘And we need a family meeting about the future of the modelling agency, because soon it will be one percent of our income.’
Ingrid put in, ‘We think to separate it from property and computers, and have staff, but we do not wish to leave that industry.’
‘Not leave the industry, but we need to be realistic about where the profit is,’ I told her. ‘And the twins should be overseeing our property businesses as well, and the nightclubs, and visiting each business and property once a year and reviewing them.’
Ingrid and Rolf both nodded.
Ingrid told me, ‘They are smart, and they learn accounts.’
I suggested to her, ‘And they’ll be running things when you two take long holidays to Asia, just the two of you, some relaxation time.’
They exchanged a look.
Ingrid noted, ‘We will slow down some eventually, and the twins can run the businesses with our staff – we would have managers and staff.’
I faced Rolf. ‘And if this new computer business goes as well as we think it will, how much will it make you in five years?’
‘It could make us … a hundred million Euro or more, much more.’
‘Enough to retire on and … slow down some, not to get stressed with work when you reach sixty. And this hotel, when you first brought me here, what did you hope for?’
‘We hoped for maybe sixty thousand Euro a year profit,’ Rolf noted. ‘Now we make that each day. More.’
‘A year from now the property income here will be millions a month, so plan for that,’ I told them. ‘We’ll end up with fifty villas and many apartments.’
Ingrid told me, ‘We plan a villa, like the special villa in Mandoch Valley.’
‘I’ll find some good land for you, and there are plots left to build on in Mandoch Valley, below the first batch of villas.’
‘We think about some place isolated,’ Rolf told me. ‘But with a good road and near a village maybe, a quiet beach.’
‘Have a look around and let me know, I can grab the land for you. But Claudia wants to do the same thing, so she may find the good land first.’
‘Two villas then, side-by-side,’ Ingrid suggested.
At 7pm, in their villa - one of the hotel’s three-bed villas, we sat about the kitchen table, pads and pens ready.
‘OK,’ I began, the twins a little red from the sun. ‘We need to reorganise the businesses … because how we got started, and where we are now, are miles apart.
‘This year, the spring water will make me thirty million or more profit, my massage video could top a hundred million dollars easily, and the lake valley could make a hundred million on land and villa sales – including the build costs.
‘We have the income from this hotel, the holiday village next door, we have Mandoch Valley and we’ll soon have the lake valley – which will see the largest income from villa rentals. Rolf, you have a share in the warehouse business here…’
‘Yes, with Ross Daniels and now with the main consortium. That warehouse, however, pushes the profit to the consortium and the hotels, we only make a modest amount, and our cut would be a few million profit a year.
‘But as a result of the warehouse we also make extra money on the hotels we own and operate, the cruise liner and the holiday village. They all get cheap supplies.’
I began, writing things down, ‘We also have the British computer business, the wine bars, and soon I want to create a chain of coffee shops that also sell bread and bagels.
‘We have the nightclubs as well, and the modelling work. What we need … is to structure it so that it all runs smoothly, and my time … should be focused on those things that will make us the best profit.
‘That best profit … seems to be the computer business in Britain and Europe -’
‘Yes,’ Rolf agreed. ‘But we wait to see what the lake valley will produce.’
I responded, ‘What I like - as good long term investments and sound business sense - is land and property, long term rental income collected and house prices rises seen.
‘When the twins are fifty years old we’ll still have the land and villas as well as the rental income, something for my eight grandchildren to inherit.’
The twins smiled widely.
‘At least eight,’ Rolf quipped.
‘But I was thinking about the consortium, and some day floating it, a stock market listing…’
‘That would be expected,’ Rolf agreed.
‘If we did that, I would create a company where I had some shares handed to myself, a wage paid. Is that legal?’
‘You create the company, and the investors join with you based on your name and track record; they would be fighting each other to be involved. You would give priority to the existing investors?’
‘Yes, and they could sell some shares after floatation and make a profit. But … if such a company was out of my control in the future, and they raised prices to the British Government, the company would fail. So I need to keep a tight control on it.’
Rolf stated, ‘You and I, we have the largest share of the management company for the consortium. Once all invested money and dividends are paid back … we have that company and all of the nursing homes and the ongoing profit … which are technically ours.
‘You originally structured it so that the investors would invest year to year, so we have control now and we could have control in the future, but not if floated on the stock market. There, the largest block beyond thirty percent takes control.’
I told them, ‘We have a few years … to a time when I may wish to float it. But it’s growing rapidly and it needs more staff each year, soon some bigger offices and dedicated offices … somewhere, London maybe. How are the Swedish men in my offices coping?’
‘They were not busy to start, now they are starting to get busy and may need more staff soon to keep a control over it.’
I nodded. ‘The best idea … would be separate British offices, French and Spanish offices, Greek offices and other countries, with a small global head office in Leicester.’
Rolf nodded. ‘Yes, as now but larger offices. But we learn from Frances House and the warehouse, we have the computer software for management planning and information, we simply replicate that over and over.’
‘The Swedish men in my offices get all they need from that software?’
‘Your software people keep adding modules to it, and we can all access the monthly summary details and the breakdowns. So they have all they need, and it is an efficient system; the computer does the work of a hundred people.’
‘Good, let’s keep the software growing.’
Ingrid noted, ‘That accounts software, there is now a version in German and one in Swedish, some changes to allow to different reporting and tax rules.’
I turned my head to Rolf. ‘It sells well?’
‘So far they simply test it on friends of mine, but the new rentals company will be able to sell it around Europe. And here in Corsica most all hotels now use your software, with a direct link to the warehouse. They now say … that they could not live without it.
‘They check their stock each evening and plan ahead, orders made to the warehouse electronically, and they do not need to worry about cash flow or delivery delays. Each hotel saves at least two or three salaries by using the computer, a good saving.’
I nodded at that. ‘How do we balance things with the Kudulov Estate?’
‘Their hotels and restaurants make extra profit from us, from the warehouse, but we use their ships at a discount, so it is a trade-off. They supply the nursing home building materials and make a profit from them, but not an excessive profit.
‘This year, their hotels and businesses will make a huge profit as a result of the popularity of this island – a popularity which you created, as well as benefitting from the cheaper warehouse goods. And it was you who worked the deal with Lee Tong.’
‘He’s in Europe next week, I’ll meet with him. Oh, did we hand Kudulov a few places in Mandoch Valley and here?’
