Milady's Fine Gentleman 44 SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS

At Xue Shipping.

The executives of Xue Shipping were gathered in the conference room. Yet another crisis had befallen them.

Their marine tanker MT Urgent Sunset had been overstaying at a port in Country V. It had unfortunately missed its docking window so it was bumped off indefinitely. Unfortunately, Country V will be observing an annual week-long holiday, and all the operations, plants and ports will be closed. It was estimated that MT Urgent Sunset will be overstaying for at least two weeks. The analogy was like making a metered taxi wait indefinitely. In business and layman terms, it's a loss of about five billion yuans!

It was only a conservative figure, as the port will only open after a week. Once it opened, there was no fixed berthing line up yet. The vessel will wait so much longer, and incur even larger monetary penalty for Xue Shipping.

"What is the latest news?" The COO asked with knitted brows.

"From the looks of it, MT Urgent Sunset will have to wait for a few more days." The Technical Marine Head, Director Yun Lifeng reported.

BAM! Xue Jinxu slapped the table hard. "Can't you do anything about it?"

"We are trying! However, she already missed her docking window so we could only wait for an opening."

"Every minute, the company is losing money!" Xue Jinxu roared. "Sort it out, will you? At the soonest possible time!"

"Understood, we will discuss this matter again with the port authorities." Director Yun Lifeng committed.

"However we have another problem…." The Finance Manager hesitated before continuing.

"I'll report." It was the CFO who spoke. "Our current cash flow is not sufficient to open the necessary arrangements with the bank for MT Urgent Sunset, and for our other fleets as well."

Xue Jinxu flinched upon hearing this. "Dear sir, what do you mean by that?"

The CFO sighed. "We are expecting payment from our other clients but we have not received them on time. It caused a shortfall in our cash flow. But, most significantly, there was a big spending that had been booked in our records. It was for the launch of MT Dragon Heart."

He paused, allowing his audience to follow his explanations. "MT Dragon Heart's launch was postponed, and had been subjected into further alterations. It also added to the expense."

Xue Jinxu could not follow at all. "The modifications for MT Dragon Heart would not be significant in your figures. As for the delayed receivables of payment, we could follow up our clients, right? What's the big deal here?"

"The bigger truth is…" The CFO and Xue Guangxi exchanged glimpses. The CFO continued. "Our new Marketing Director had discovered while reviewing our pending projects that there were a lot of abnormally irregular and large spending for projects that were supposedly long been completed in the past, or had been dropped. There was a serious case of embezzlement of funds by the previous Marketing Director!"

"That was the reason why our books were not balanced and our accountants could not tally the figures with the actual fund allocation. It significantly affected our cash flow and now we are critically short of funds. We had been discussing with the banks, so far, but they have their regulations too, which were as plain as black and white. For now, we could only secure a promissory note."

The previous Marketing Director was too much! He did not only use his own niece in his plans to implicate the Xue Family, and not only did he betray them in one of their own projects. He also stole from them a large sum enough to hamper operations, and to make the company bankrupt! The nerve!

Xue Jinxu massaged her nape and her head with her fingertips. She took a deep breath first. She had to remind herself that everyone was looking at her, waiting for her stand on the matter.

At one side, operations-wise, they were encountering problems with the physical implementation of their plan, and the ship was waiting indefinitely at the port. The longer MT Urgent Sunset waits, the higher their monetary penalty would be.

At another aspect, even if ideally the ship could dock at the port, it still cannot berth successfully because there were no funds in the bank! The port will only allow the ship to use its facility once there had been cleared payment in the bank. However, apparently they could not do that because they did not have the funds!

The funds, which were allocated for this and for other projected expenses, had in actuality been liquidated for other synthetic reasons created by the previous traitor Marketing Director, Wang Xi Fu. He had stolen the funds little by little throughout his reign without being noticed. It was only discovered because Xue Guangxi took over the Marketing Director position.

Even if they had collected their delayed receivables from clients, it would not be enough to sustain their operations.

"Let's have the legal team formally file a case against the previous Marketing Director, Wang Xi Fu. He should answer the law." However the culprit had gone into hiding.

"For the funds, how much do we need?" Xue Jinxu asked after a long silence.

The CFO named an exorbitant amount. After all, the company had several fleets in operation.

"That high?" Xue Jinxu was appalled. "We have to prioritize raising the money first through quickest means. The floor is open for suggestions."

"Xu-jie." In the entirety of the meeting, Guangxi had remained silent since it was also his first executive meeting as the new Marketing Director. "I have some ideas. Please hear me out and see if it's plausible."

By all means, it was in fact the Marketing team's responsibility to contribute ways or solutions in raising funds. However, Xue Jinxu had intentionally not called her little brother out, the Marketing Director, because she was worried that he would not be able to handle the situation, and deal with his own team. She was both pleased and nervous that he had spoken at this moment. She was anticipating what he had to say.

Chapter end

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