Chapter 1821: Steady

December 18, 2007, Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

With the sound of a gong, Alibaba finally went public.

A photo of Ma Xiaoyun beaming appeared in the newspaper, and Zhao Fusheng, looking at the paper, was also all smiles.

With Alibaba's listing, Ma Xiaoyun naturally made a fortune, but relatively speaking, Zhao Fusheng was the one who earned the most.

After all, he was now Alibaba's largest shareholder.

You think you're making a lot, but I never lose.

That was Zhao Fusheng's business philosophy.

For him, no matter what the business, his own profit was the most important—this was a major premise. If this premise couldn't be met, then for him, the business was a failure.

"You're in a good mood?"

Seeing Zhao Fusheng grinning foolishly, Fan Baobao asked in confusion.

Zhao Fusheng nodded: "Of course. Shouldn't making money make one happy?"

"Huh?"

Fan Baobao walked over, picked up the newspaper Zhao Fusheng had just read, and immediately understood what was going on. She looked at him speechlessly: "Just because of this?"

"Of course."

Zhao Fusheng nodded: "Shouldn't this make one happy?"

Fan Baobao thought it over carefully and realized he was right. After all, Zhao Fusheng had been laying out plans for the Alibaba project for years, and now that the harvest time was in sight, he was naturally delighted.

"Alright, alright, then tonight we'll have something nice to eat." Fan Baobao said to Zhao Fusheng with a smile.

Looking at his wife speechlessly, Zhao Fusheng sighed: "You clearly want to eat yourself, why use me as an excuse."

"What, you don't want to eat with me?"

Fan Baobao immediately put on a look of eager anticipation, her acting so realistic it couldn't be more so.

"I do, I do."

Zhao Fusheng quickly begged for mercy, finding himself increasingly unable to handle Fan Baobao. Ever since she became pregnant, she had taken to playing the little woman act.

Life between husband and wife is like this—sometimes harmless little jokes can make their relationship even better.

Zhao Fusheng and Fan Baobao had known each other for years, yet their feelings remained so strong, not only because they were childhood sweethearts, but also because both of them maintained the relationship in their own ways.

In Fan Baobao's words to Zhou Yun, men are like children—a cup of hot water, a cup of cold water, and occasionally a jelly with popping candy, and they'll be obedient and docile before you.

That was certainly true.

Men, after all, like those silly, cute women, but that's all about looks. If they had to face a girl who understood nothing all day and just played dumb, there might be some novelty at first, but over time, they'd inevitably get tired of it.

With this mindset, Zhao Fusheng cheerfully arrived at the Future Group headquarters.

He smiled at everyone, radiating sunshine like a halo over his head—if he had a ring, he'd be a freshly baked God.

"Did you take the wrong medicine?"

Seeing Zhao Fusheng walk into the office with a happy face, Zheng Yao was a bit baffled.

"How do you talk!"

Zhao Fusheng glared at Zheng Yao: "I've noticed, all of you people now know how to speak sarcastically. How are you supposed to spar with others at the negotiation table, trading barbs, huh?"

Zheng Yao ignored him entirely, busying herself with approving documents. Only after finishing several files did she look up and sneer at Zhao Fusheng: "My dear Chairman, first of all, I've been speaking sarcastically for quite a while now—did you just notice today? Secondly, during negotiations, someone like me only needs to make the final call; the details are handled by others..."

"I..."

Zhao Fusheng was instantly speechless. He took a deep breath, silently reciting 'the world is so beautiful' three times, and decided not to argue with this short-sighted woman.

"So, what did you call me for?"

Zhao Fusheng looked at Zheng Yao, puzzled.

He had been at home with his wife when Zheng Yao called him over, so naturally he was confused.

Zheng Yao shrugged and said to Zhao Fusheng: "Here's the thing—there's an ad. Do you want to take it?"

"An ad?"

Zhao Fusheng was taken aback and curled his lip: "Are you kidding me? With my status, why would I do ad planning..."

That was true. His status was different now, so he no longer needed to do planning like before.

Zheng Yao shook her head: "It's for luxury goods. To be honest, although we have a large share in the mid-to-high-end market, in the luxury goods sector—especially foreign luxury goods—we've always struggled. So I thought..."

"No need."

Zhao Fusheng waved his hand and directly rejected: "Let me tell you this: those so-called luxury brands don't really trust Chinese ad planning companies. Think about it—if they really trusted Chinese ad companies, they would hold tenders domestically, not abroad with some bidding system. Tell me, how could those foreigners understand China's national conditions?"

Zheng Yao fell silent, unable to speak for a long time.

She really hadn't thought of that.

Or rather, many Chinese people had never understood why every time those so-called foreign high-end luxury goods appeared, there were incidents of insulting China.

The reason was actually simple: these so-called high-end luxury goods, from manufacturers to sellers, never truly placed the Chinese market on an equal footing.

Their ads were either produced by themselves or entrusted to foreign ad agencies they had long-term partnerships with.

Under such circumstances, how could an ad agency that knew nothing about China's national conditions produce ads that thoroughly considered all the various situations in China?

The seat determines the mind—though this saying is a bit crude, you have to admit it has some truth.

Especially applied to this matter, Zhao Fusheng felt his analogy was quite apt.

"So, you mean we give up this market?"

After a long while, Zheng Yao asked Zhao Fusheng.

Zhao Fusheng nodded: "No need."

Then, looking at Zheng Yao, he said earnestly: "Do you think we still need to expand so aggressively now?"

Zheng Yao was startled and about to answer, but then she caught the deeper meaning in Zhao Fusheng's words and stopped.

She had initially wanted to say that Future Group couldn't stop expanding, but on second thought, did the company really need to do that?

It seemed, as Zhao Fusheng said, there was no need.

Now, all the subsidiaries of Future Group were performing very well, not to mention that Future Investment, after Alibaba's listing, had become a company wildly reported by major media.

With Alibaba's IPO at $10 billion, Future Investment held 40% of the shares—what did that mean?

For a moment, Zheng Yao even felt that if Zhao Fusheng chose to retire now, no one would think he had made a wrong decision.

Under thirty, with a net worth of over ten billion dollars, this guy was a living legend.

"Let's be steady."

Zhao Fusheng said to Zheng Yao: "Not just Future Investment, but all subsidiaries of Future Group—from now on, the development strategy is to seek progress while maintaining stability. We don't need to take too many risks, do we?"

Though she wanted to refute him, Zheng Yao helplessly found no reason to argue.

What he said was absolutely right.

Now, if the strengths of all Future Group's subsidiaries were combined, it would be a behemoth.

Under such circumstances, there was indeed no need to take risks with experiments. As long as they developed steadily, they would surely become one of the top domestic enterprises.

Even a multinational company ranking among the world's top 500.

Under these circumstances, being steady was indeed not wrong.