Rise of Empires: Spain.

Chapter 156 Acquisition Plan and Talent Discovery

Industry Minister Manuel Ruiz Zorrilla certainly knew that his demands were a bit excessive, but he also knew that this was the best time to acquire these companies.

Even though this acquisition order requires 5.2 million pesetas, if it were placed before the economic crisis, even if the acquisition funds were tripled, it might not be enough to acquire these companies.

The existing equipment, technology and assets of these companies alone are far more than 5.2 million pesetas, which also means that as long as the Spanish government can acquire these companies, it will definitely make a profit.

Moreover, these enterprises can provide vital assistance to various industries in Spain. If this acquisition order can be completed, according to the estimation of the industrial department, Spain's future industrial development will be strongly helped, and it will be more likely to become a truly industrial power.

"Minister Ruiz, with all due respect, the government does not have enough funds to provide to the industrial sector to purchase these companies." Before Prime Minister Primo could express his opinion, Finance Minister Ewald could no longer sit still and quickly stood up to oppose the proposal of Industry Minister Ruiz.

Let's not talk about whether the Spanish government has the money to come up with. Even if it does, Ewald will definitely not agree to the acquisition plan proposed by the industrial sector.

Because it is not only the industrial sector that needs to acquire companies to improve its foundation, and the scope of companies that can be acquired is not limited to those designated by the industrial sector.

If all the purchase orders from the industrial sector are approved, the finance department will then have to face continuous purchase orders from other departments.

Even though Ewald knew that the acquisition would only benefit Spain, the problem was that this was not the way to spend money.

"Your Excellency, Prime Minister, we are confident that this acquisition will help us rapidly improve our country's industrial development." Industry Minister Ruiz ignored the objection of Finance Minister Ewald and continued to express his optimism about the acquisition to Prime Minister Primo:

Especially in heavy industry and chemical industry, it will be a great boost for us if we can obtain the assets of these foreign companies.

After absorbing these foreign assets, within a year our steel output will exceed 20 tons and iron output will exceed 50 tons.

If you give me five years, I am confident that we can make steel production exceed 100 million tons and iron production exceed 300 million tons, thus closing the gap with other powerful countries."

"One million tons of steel production? Three million tons of pig iron production?" Prime Minister Primo was not intoxicated by the ambitious goal proposed by Industry Minister Ruiz, but questioned it.

In terms of steel production, 100 million tons of steel and 300 million tons of iron can indeed make up the gap with other European powers.

Considering that other European countries are experiencing serious economic crises, as long as this requirement can be met, Spain's industry will once again be among the top five in Europe.

But the question is, is it really a good thing to allow Spain's industry to achieve such a huge boost in such a short period of time?

The current economic crisis has proved that too fast industrial and economic development is not a good thing. Only steady growth in line with Spain's own environment is the best way for economic and industrial development.

Spain does have enough money to make acquisitions, and does have the potential to increase steel production to several million tons within five years.

But doing so has little benefit other than the blind pursuit of steel production, and is instead a burden on the country's development.

Prime Minister Primo is not pessimistic about the acquisition plan of foreign companies. However, the acquisition should also be in line with the actual development of Spain, rather than adding all valuable companies to the acquisition list for the sake of false grand goals.

Time passed minute by minute, and Prime Minister Primo still looked thoughtful and did not give any answer.

Industry Minister Ruiz became a little anxious and took a step forward to continue persuading Prime Minister Primo, but was interrupted by Prime Minister Primo with a wave of his hand.

"The acquisition plan is necessary, but we need to think carefully about the companies on the acquisition list." Finally, after thinking for several minutes, Prime Minister Primo gave his opinion:

At the same time, the acquisition targets cannot be limited to factories in European countries, but also need to look at medical companies and private research laboratories in various countries.

Minister Ewald, how much money can the government currently allocate to acquire foreign companies? "

Hearing Prime Minister Primo's question, Ewald immediately blurted out: "Your Excellency, the current funds available to the Ministry of Finance are 3.2 million pesetas.

This year, some of the tax revenue has not yet been transferred to the Treasury, but considering the budget of other departments and our debt, the maximum amount that can be diverted is 2.1 million pesetas. "

Prime Minister Primo shook his head, obviously not satisfied with the share of funds that could be diverted: “The finance department will collect another 9000 million pesetas, a total of 3 million pesetas to invest in this acquisition plan.

For this acquisition plan, I hope to carefully select the factories and enterprises to be acquired. Spain's development does not need too grand goals, we need to move forward steadily step by step based on the existing foundation. "

"Yes, Your Excellency." Finance Minister Ewald nodded, not daring to question Prime Minister Primo's order in the slightest.

Minister of Industry Ruiz also smiled at this time. Although the funds used for the acquisition were less than 60% of what he proposed, it was still a large amount of 3 million pesetas.

With the economic crisis raging in Europe, the value of this money can be at least equivalent to the 15 billion pesetas before the crisis broke out.

The decision to spend 3 million pesetas to acquire foreign companies was made by Prime Minister Primo after careful consideration.

It's not that the Spanish government can't come up with more funds. Although the current amount of funds in the Ministry of Finance is not much, with the gold in the temple treasure, the Spanish government has no problem printing hundreds of millions of pesetas.

But we must also understand the principle of biting off more than we can chew. Spain can indeed buy more factories and enterprises from foreign countries, but whether it can successfully digest these factories and enterprises is still unknown.

What's more, if we unscrupulously purchase bankrupt companies from these powerful countries, it will inevitably attract the attention of the powerful countries.

Spain has already been easily targeted because it has not suffered much impact from the economic crisis. If it continues to take advantage of the economic crisis, the subsequent diplomatic situation may not be so good.

Although 3 million pesetas is not a lot of money, it can ensure that Spain can purchase a sufficient number of companies and factories to fill the gap in Spain's industrial foundation.

With these factories and enterprises, Spain's industrial development will also usher in a faster growth rate. Coupled with the impact of the economic crisis on other countries, the gap between Spain and European powers will be further narrowed.

Another thing is that Spain's development still needs to be steady and step by step, and we should not pay too much attention to the data on paper.

For example, a steel production of 100 million tons and an iron production of 300 million tons are completely unnecessary for Spain today.

Under the orders of Prime Minister Primo, Industry Minister Ruiz made changes to the industrial sector's plans.

The latest industrial sector plan is to increase Spain's steel production to 10 tons and 20 tons within a year, and to 50 tons and 100 million tons within five years.

As long as this goal can be achieved, Spain will be able to join the ranks of industrial powers. The steel produced each year can not only meet the domestic demand in Spain, but also be exported to neighboring Portugal and other industrial shares.

A few days later, Prime Minister Primo reviewed the acquisition list submitted by the industrial sector again and eliminated all military factories from it.

The reason is very simple. The royal family's acquisition plan includes military factories, so the government naturally has no need to do anything unnecessary.

The Spanish government has limited funds at its disposal and there is no need to repeat the purchase of companies that the royal family has already purchased.

In fact, purchasing bankrupt companies is only one of the plans. Along with purchasing bankrupt companies, there is also the action of recruiting talents in various countries.

Obviously, these companies alone are not enough. Spain must make up for the gap in technical talent with other countries in order to further develop all walks of life in Spain. The current economic crisis is a good opportunity. The economic crisis has not only made ordinary workers unemployed, but also skilled workers, technical workers and senior engineers with certain technical skills.

Of course, compared with skilled workers and technical workers, the current situation of senior engineers is obviously better.

Except for those engineers whose companies have gone bankrupt, most engineers can still make ends meet, at least maintaining a basic standard of living is not a problem.

After all, senior engineers in this era are already middle and senior management of a company, and their income levels have already reached senior levels.

It is also because of this that there is a detailed division for the discovery of talents in various countries.

Although big countries obviously have more high-level talents, the environment for these high-level talents is also better. The companies they work for are unlikely to face bankruptcy. Even if there is a bankruptcy crisis, they will most likely be saved by the government.

Although there are not many high-level talents in small countries, the enterprises they work in are also relatively small. Small enterprises are naturally unable to withstand the impact of the economic crisis, and the capabilities of small countries are also limited, and it is impossible to save every enterprise.

Spain's plan for talent discovery can be summed up in a few words: it will give priority to recruiting technical talents and senior engineers in related fields from small countries such as the Netherlands, Belgium and Portugal.

If these small European countries cannot meet all of Spain's talent needs, then it will turn its attention to European powers such as Britain, France and Germany to further fill the talent gap.

The advantage of doing so is that it is unlikely to attract the attention of the powerful countries. Even if small countries discover Spain's crazy buying and digging behavior, they can only condemn it at most, and naturally they are unable to take practical action.

Compared with the development of Spain, it is not a big deal to be condemned by these small countries. Although there is a certain gap between Spain and the powerful countries, it is still a powerful giant compared with these small countries.

There is another problem with doing this, which is that the talents discovered speak different languages ​​​​from different countries, and even need translators to communicate and interact with local Spanish companies and experts.

But there is no way around it. Spain's decline has been going on for a long time, and Spanish has naturally not been very popular in Europe.

In the early stage, we can only provide these technical talents and senior engineers with translators to ensure that there will be no problems with their work and normal communication.

In the later stage, we can only set up language learning classes for them to help them master Spanish faster. After all, these excavated talents will serve Spain in the future. If they don’t learn Spanish, how can they let the Spaniards learn their language?
This, in turn, shows the importance of Portugal. Portuguese and Spanish are very similar and can even be understood as two evolutions of one language.

The Portuguese and Spanish can understand each other in communication. Comparatively speaking, the Portuguese can understand Spanish better, while the Spanish need to listen carefully to understand Portuguese.

This also led to the fact that Portuguese people can live easily in Spain because there is almost no language barrier, which is also the special feature of Portugal and Spain as the two Iberian countries.

It is precisely because of this that when Prime Minister Primo proposed the need to tap talent in the industrial sector, he specifically instructed that Portugal be the first stop for talent tapping.

No matter whether these talents have lost their jobs due to reasons in their current companies, as long as they are senior talents in Portugal, they will be poached first.

As a neighbor on the Iberian Peninsula, Spain is not afraid of offending Portugal. Even Portugal can only tremble in front of Spain. The gap in strength between the two countries is very large.

Although there are not many senior engineers in Portugal, there are still some relatively outstanding technical workers and ordinary engineers.

Prime Minister Primo’s opinion is naturally to recruit as many people as possible. Portugal’s development does not require so many talents anyway, and they are destined to fail to develop.

Soon, at the request of Prime Minister Primo, various departments jointly submitted a list of talent needs that was even more substantial than the acquisition plan.

In this talent demand list, each department has put forward its own talent needs, and the entire list is several stacks thick.

There are two types of talents that Spain currently needs most. The first type is skilled technical workers, engineers from all walks of life, etc. required for industrial development.

The second category is researchers, or scientists. Whether they are studying physics or chemistry, or studying biomedicine, steel smelting, oil extraction and refining, the Spanish government has an attitude that they will not refuse anyone and the country's doors are open to these talents at any time.

Prime Minister Primo and Carlo reached a consensus on attracting scientific research talents.

First of all, Spain is very short of this kind of scientific research talent. The fact that Spain has not had any Nobel Prize winners in physics and chemistry also proves that Spain lacks this kind of talent.

In order to express the importance of these talents, whether they are talents recruited by the royal family or the government, they will all join the Royal Academy of Sciences established by Carlo.

The Royal Society has been established for several years and has built several large laboratories for research in physics, chemistry, biomedicine, mechanical design and chemical engineering, which are open free of charge to all scientists in the Royal Society.

If you don't like the idea of ​​having to compete for time with other experts in large laboratories, the Royal Academy of Sciences also provides private laboratories for scientists of sufficient level to ensure that scientists can conduct their own scientific research anytime and anywhere.

Yes, after several years of development, the Royal Academy of Sciences has also developed a more detailed level division.

Carlo himself attached great importance to scientists, and naturally attached great importance to the development of the Royal Academy of Sciences.

Although the Royal Academy of Sciences is only an academic research institution, it still possesses considerable power.

All scientists who join the Royal Academy of Sciences are called members of the Academy and enjoy three types of income: basic salary + R&D rewards + tenure rewards.

The first is the basic salary. There are three levels of academicians in the Royal Academy of Sciences: first-level academicians, second-level academicians and third-level academicians.

The basic annual salary of a first-level academician is 1800 pesetas, the basic salary of a second-level academician is 3200 pesetas, and the basic salary of a third-level academician is 4500 pesetas.

Although the level of basic salary is not the highest in Europe, it is more than ten times the income of ordinary people.

What's more, basic salary is only one of the incomes of academicians of the Academy of Sciences, and it cannot even be considered the bulk of the income.

In addition to the basic salary, all research conducted by members of the Royal Academy of Sciences will receive a certain share based on their contribution to the research results, up to 5%.

Although one-twentieth of the share is not much, it depends on what the research results are. For example, if a more advanced drug is developed in biology, it may represent hundreds of millions or even billions of pesetas of income.

In this case, even a 5% share would be enough to make an academician of the Academy of Sciences a millionaire.

Finally, let’s talk about the income of the position. All scientists of the Royal Academy of Sciences are called academicians, even the president of the academy.

Although there is no difference in rank for positions such as dean, there are still big differences in power and income.

However, there are still relatively few positions within the Academy of Sciences, and more positions are actually in the Royal Academy of Sciences, which is closely related to the Royal Academy of Sciences.

Members of the Royal Academy of Sciences can work part-time at the Academy of Sciences, with the lowest position being honorary professor, with an income of 500 pesetas.

The combined income of these three sources ensures that the income level of members of the Royal Academy of Sciences is similar to that of senior talents in other European countries, or even slightly higher.

This is also the confidence that Carlo and Prime Minister Primo have in attracting talents. After all, no matter how passionate scientists are about research, they have to eat first.

Please support this two-in-one chapter of 5,100 words!


(End of this chapter)