Extraordinary Genius

"Feng, why didn't you call me when you are back?" Feng Yu heard Kirilenko shouting from a distance.

"You are here, Kirilenko? We are about to call you in a while." Li Zekai stood up and laughed.

"Zekai, Zeju, you all are also here! Terrific! Let's go for a drink tonight!" Kirilenko smiled happily.

It's boring to drink with Feng Yu, and more interesting to drink with Li Zekai. Although Li Zekai cannot drink much, they shared a common interest after drinking.

Li Zeju is the same as Feng Yu, who doesn't drink or party like them. That's why Kirilenko doesn't like him.

"I had just returned, and we are discussing Amazon and Google listing. They want to buy some shares." Feng Yu explained.

"I came here for the same purpose. I can raise a sum of money for the shares too. Can you sell some to me? How about I use my eBay shares to exchange with you?" Kirilenko said.

"Brother Ki, Amazon cannot cooperate with eBay. If both companies cooperate, we will be sued for monopolizing the market. We cannot exchange shares, but I can sell the shares to you. It will be too troublesome for our companies to own each other shares."

Kirilenko scratches his head. This Anti-trust law is too troublesome. If Amazon, the world's No.1, can cooperate with eBay, World's No.2, they will have no competitors in Europe. After all, Kirilenko is one of the major shareholders of the eCommerce site in the former Soviet Union countries.

"What about Google?"

"Brother Ki, did you forget about your Lenko search engine? It owns more than 70% of the market share in Eastern Europe. We can't exchange shares, but I can sell the shares to you."

Kirilenko had named this search engine using part of his name.

If Google and Lenko can cooperate, it will be English, Mandarin, and Russian search engines. They will defeat even the Korean search engine.

The other search engine websites, like Yahoo, are second-tier, and they will be kicked out of this market. But these companies cannot merge or cooperate.

Ordinary share trading is not affected by this restriction, and Kirilenko can purchase the newly issued shares of these two companies. Exchanging shares between both companies and entering each other's board of directors are not allowed.

Even if they don't exchange shares, their interests were tied together a long time ago. Also, both of them will not allow cut-throat competition between both companies.

Li Zekai and Li Zeju exchanged looks. They are curious about why Kirilenko sounded like he does not have much cash?

Kirilenko is Europe's Richest Man and should have hundreds of millions of spare cash sitting around.

They are unaware that Kirilenko had invested most of his money into gold futures. Gold prices are still rising, and he is making high returns when he settles his contracts.

The gold futures contracts were very cheap when they purchase them, and gold prices raised to 430 USD per ounce earlier this year. But since the start of last month, gold prices start to fall. Luckily, Kirilenko had listened to Feng Yu and did not use high leverage. He also kept some reserves for him to hedge against the risks.

Feng Yu remembers gold prices will continue to rise despite the fluctuations and did not expect it to fall suddenly. It fell from 430 USD to 375USD.

Luckily Feng Yu is prepared. Wind and Rain Consulting has sufficient reserves, and they managed to settle some contracts in time and started shorting gold. They did not suffer any losses and still maintained high returns.

When gold prices fell to around 380 USD, they started buying in. They managed to buy gold at an average of 378 USD per ounce.

As expected, gold prices started to rise again, and it is almost 400 USD now.

Kirilenko does have cash. Although he still has debts with the banks, the interest rate is lower than his returns from his stocks and futures contracts. That's why he is repaying the banks' high interests and continues to enjoy high returns.

Kirilenko had raised cash from the Polar Bear Supermarket Group and Polar Bear Mining Enterprise's profits.

Kirilenko got a fright when gold prices plunged suddenly because he had thought of using high leverage some time ago. But he decided to listen to Feng Yu's advice and uses leverages between two to five times.

The future market is too volatile, and Feng Yu is worry about the butterfly effect. What if gold prices suddenly plunge and they cannot react in time?

Even with lower leverages, their returns are more than 20% annually. This is considered very high, as most financial institutions are getting much lesser!

They had made a lot during the past year, and Kirilenko's net worth increased to Forbes Top Ten this year!

Kirilenko is overjoyed when he entered Forbes' Top Ten Billionaires. Every billionaire on the list will receive a free copy of <Forbes>, and his copy was sent to his Russian home last year. He does not know at that time and still made a fuss.

Kirilenko has been high-profile during this period and even mocked the eight billionaires above him. Of course, they do not include Feng Yu.

Kirilenko announced that he would become the World's Second Richest Man within three years. That means his net worth of around 10 billion USD must be doubled during this period, and Bill Gates's net worth must remain the same.

All other billionaires, especially Paul Allen, laughed when they heard him. But Bill Gates did not say anything because he knows the potential of Kirilenko's businesses.

EBay's shares alone had increased Kirilenko's net worth by a lot. He mentioned that <Forbes> had undervalued his assets. How much is his real net worth?