The Meeting room that had once been Ristoan's highest level now looked somewhat empty.
At Ristoan's peak, even if there were no extra chairs, those shareholders were willing to stand here during the meeting and listen to the opinions expressed by Neo and the other board members during the meeting.
Even though these people couldn't speak or move around during the meeting, they were very happy to do so.
But right now, there were still a lot of empty chairs in this room, and combined with the rumors that were circulating at the moment, a wave of emotions that was hard to tell exactly what was going on was spreading through a small group of people in the conference room.
Gap pushed up his glasses and sat down at the end of the table, as an important staff member who had become a partner in the group of companies, he had also received an invitation from the president, Mr. Neo, to attend this closed, non-public meeting.
And there would be no minutes taken of the meeting, in other words, this meeting would not be disseminated from any official or unofficial sources, and even if someone did, no one would recognize it.
This was a meeting that would never appear in the history of Ristoan, and of course that meant that it had to be different.
Mr. Neo in the first seat looked at his watch, and the security guards at the bottom of the building looked at the watches on their wrists.
The two hundred thousand dollar watch and the two dozen dollar watch both pointed to the same time, and the security guard closed the door while Mr. Neo had more than a small smile on his face.
He looked around the room at the employees sitting at the conference table, all of whom were very "important" employees of Ristoan, and each of whom held some secret about some aspect of Ristoan.
For example,..., his eyes rested on Gap at the end of the table, the reason why he chose Gap at first glance was firstly because he did not look to the left or right, and secondly it was also a subconscious behavior.
Looking at someone selectively from the left and right would give the impression of targeting, whereas looking straight ahead would not.
Gap felt the gaze of His Excellency the President and smiled modestly, bowing his head slightly to show his submission.
Neo nodded noncommittally and began the topic of today's meeting, "As you know, there have been some allegations circulating lately, and those allegations are indeed true."
"I've already submitted the application for the relocation of the corporation to the governor, and it will be approved in a month or so at the latest, so we'll probably be done with all the relocation work by the first half of next year."
He spoke in a calm tone, his bite was clear and his butt was full of energy, he had a very strong aura that made people see his composure, calmness, "For everything that has happened during this period, I know a lot of people are confused, now I'm telling you, all this was planned by me".
The atmosphere in the conference room suddenly became slightly different, the Ristoan Group, because of the gap that arose between them and the mayor of Sabine, as well as the governor of the state, caused the stock to plummet, losing forty percent of its market capitalization in just one week.
Even the rising momentum of the Baylor Industrial Index was dragged down by it, making more and more people not optimistic about the Ristoan Group.
Immediately after Neo submitted a delisting request on behalf of the Ristoan Group's board of directors, Ristoan's stock plummeted again, and at that time, Neo and these people took the opportunity to use the extremely low prices to begin a large-scale stock buyback program, eventually completing almost more than seventy percent of the stock recycling program in that week.
There was still about twenty percent of the stock scattered in the hands of some longtime investors, as well as some accounts that showed no signs of activity.
Some are purely invested in the company, not the stock, while others are so gambling that they can't believe a conglomerate has just disappeared and are betting that there's still a day when Ristoan will return to the market.
Regardless, the plan to delist is now unstoppable, and Neo can begin to execute the next step.
He said this so that those people who already seemed to have a different attitude would drop those little thoughts.
These people were hard to give up, and Niall didn't want to have any further ties with most of them if he could help it, but these people had ties to him and to the group that were hard to ignore.
Like the new partner, Gap, who helped the firm monitor and revise a large number of books to weaken and eliminate some of the firm's less sensible accounts.
These people can seemingly become partners because of their hard work and ability, but in reality they hold the secrets of the firm, and the firm has to give them higher status and more income to make sure they keep the secret.
This group of people, they were all vampires, but the company couldn't afford to give them all up, because if one of them couldn't think straight and decided to blow himself up, the company group would have to go down with him.
He had to stabilize the heart of the military, so that these people wouldn't think of relying on selling secrets to get new opportunities, he would give these people opportunities directly.
"The group company has actually not been very effective for a few years, we have been looking for new breakthroughs and ensuring our continued smooth development at the technical level."
"The latest opportunity came from the HENG HUI Group, if we can swallow some of HENG HUI's core industries, we will be able to quickly turn around the current situation, but as we all know, we've fallen out of talks with the city hall and the state government."
"If we don't change, it won't be long before we're finished, so the board and I have finally decided to throw off all our burdens and start over."
His gaze dropped and he picked up a document on his desk, scanning it a few times before looking around the room, "I realize that some of you may have some issues with this, but that's not important."
"What is important is that when we move to our new location, we'll be dumping at least four thousand four hundred of our direct employees and about seven thousand or so that we have an indirect employment relationship with."
"This is Ristoan's biggest single expense at the moment, with most of our profits going to things like paying these people's salaries."
"Once we get rid of these people and this heavy expense, even without the core business of the HENG HUI Group, we will be able to easily complete our transformation and realize glory again."
He placed the document back on the table and looked at the participants around the conference table once again, "When our plan is completed, the Ristoan Group will reapply for a public listing, and the shares in your hands will become extraordinarily valuable!"
There was a hint of a smile at the corners of Neo's mouth, there was some sarcasm in it, but it didn't matter, what mattered was that the atmosphere in the conference room livened up.
His tone also became a bit lighter, "In light of your support for the Group Company and me during this period, I have decided to use the number of years you have been with the company, your rank, the content of your work, and many other factors as a reference to give you some extra shares as a reward for your loyalty to the Group Company."
The atmosphere became more and more calm, and many people had smiles on their faces. The thing that people in "high positions" feared the most had suddenly hit rock bottom.
The more the debate about Ristoan grew, the more uncertain they became.
Fortunately, now that President Neo had personally explained the reason, they also found out some other things that Neo hadn't explained, such as that Neo's concealment from them in the early stages was to prevent information from leaking, not to pay no attention to them.
Sometimes the human brain is just so amazing, they weren't even actively making excuses for Neo or the tablet, that kind of thought just came straight from their hearts.
Regardless of all the other things, this was ultimately a good thing, stability and more income, just a different place to live.
What followed was another breakdown, asking everyone to try to maintain stability in their departments while they interviewed key department members and then waited for instructions.
It wasn't a long meeting, and after it was over, Neo's secretary sent over a list of names, the spirited smile on his face a moment ago replaced by a coldness that implied anger.
There were four people on the list who hadn't come to the meeting, these people, like Gap and the like, were in possession of some evidence of the group companies that might not be entirely legal, and they were even the handlers.
This was actually very common in large corporations, and there were definitely some challenges that a corporation would face if it wanted to run smoothly.
Some of these challenges can be reasonably solved through gameplay, such as challenges from other players, or some non-human difficulties.
But there are also some things that are hard to solve, like "I just don't know," the irrational people that are prevalent in the underclass, or things like the ones Gap handles that require some skillful means to solve some of the non-human problems.
As long as those problems existed, there had to be handlers, and now there were four guys who didn't show up for meetings, which made Neo very upset.
If they revealed anything to Sabine City Hall or the state government, it was likely that his next opportunities would be thwarted.
After a few moments, he moved his five senses and told his secretary to leave first, then picked up the phone to ask the head of the company's internal security department to come over.
About seven or eight minutes later, a middle-aged man with a shaved head and a somewhat grumpy face entered the room.
Neo handed him the list, "Find out what these people are doing, who they've been in contact with lately, and what they're planning.
The Head of Internal Security took the list and looked at it for a few moments before looking back at Niall, "If ...".
Neo tilted his head to a huge oil painting hanging on the wall of the office, a painting done by a famous medieval artist when the government of the country the artist was from was suppressing an act of rebellion known as the Canned Riots and a large number of rioters were sent to the firing squad.
The painting shows this image, with a large number of heads hanging by their hair on the edge of the execution platform, and a steady stream of victims waiting to be beheaded, with distorted and bizarre facial expressions on the faces of the onlookers below the platform.
There was a kind of fear, but also what looked like excitement, and for that reason, two schools of thought had sprung up to discuss the attitude of the painter, and whether it was fear, or excitement, or something else that he was trying to convey in the faces of these people.
Neo's eyes looked at the painting for a moment before pulling them away, lowering his gaze as he pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one.
A hint of the trembling of LANG SING's cigarette lighter reed still remained as he exhaled the smoke with a grin, "The world is full of accidents every day, Mr. Minister.