The Shadow of Great Britain

Chapter 1758: Chapter 83: Birth of a Millionaire

Five years, merely a few brief pages turning on a calendar, insignificant to the passage of time.

But for a city in the midst of the Industrial Revolution, it was enough to cause foundational shifts, street name changes, and population replacements, transforming it dramatically.

Five years ago, gas lamps were merely rare curiosities adorning the central regions of London. For most streets, whenever it rained at night, a grey mist would engulf and obliterate the streets along the Thames River.

But now?

From Greenwich to Paddington, from Charing Cross to Hyde Park, when the hour hand on the pocket watch crosses six, the gaslight acts like a neural network awakening this most modern city in the world from the slumber of night. Nightlife, it’s a fashionable new term, but for the fast-paced London citizens, it’s long been no novelty.

Five years ago, the old printing machines of ”The British” were gasping between hums, and even when pushed to the limit, they could only print a few hundred copies per hour. But now, steam roared through the copper pipes in the machine room of ”The British,” spitting out pages filled with dense print at an astonishing rate of 4000 sheets per hour from Bradbury & Evans’s latest steam cylinder presses.

The British national literary magazine ”The British,” with its sales reaching eighty thousand copies per issue, the rising star ”Spark,” the Europe-renowned philosophical periodical ”Nature,” and the ”Economist,” beloved by professionals in the London Financial City, even held a thirty percent share in the unparalleled ”The Times.”

In this era where steam and print came together, even thoughts began to demand mass production.

The editorial office of ”The British,” or rather, we should call it by its new name. Empire Publishing Group, a company once founded on the whim of a few young people. Five years ago, its office was merely a medium-sized rented suite on Fleet Street, but now, it’s transformed into a ”Victory” crossing literature, science, finance, and communication in the field of cultural media.

Especially after successfully acquiring England Electromagnetic Telegraph Company, this ship could not only print but also transmit. And in the realm of public opinion, it could record and even create.

Empire Publishing’s expansion never relied on naval guns but on parallel sentences in columns, exquisite covers, and jumping electromagnetic signals in cables.

Information is power, reporting is prophecy.

In the field of cultural propagation, it is no longer the newcomer of Fleet Street, but has become the new beacon guiding other magazine publishers on Fleet Street: It is preparing to embark on the broad road towards the London Stock Exchange.

Before the London Stock Exchange welcomed the New Year’s bell, the Empire Publishing Group’s pre-subscription plan had already spread widely outside Fleet Street.

And this time, it was not the tabloid vendors spreading the word, but the shrewd old-fashioned bankers in the Financial City.

They unanimously focused their eyes on one thing — the telegraph.

”Printing allows us to spread thoughts, but the telegraph lets us predict the future.” This somewhat exaggerated comment came from the new editor-in-chief of ”Economist,” Mr. James Langworth, who had personally experienced the royal theft incident at Golden Cross Station.

James Langworth, nurtured by the legendary editor of ”The Times,” Thomas Barnes, had once gained fame in Britain under the name ”the Conscience of Chechnya” for his in-depth reporting from the Caucasus Region on the Chechens resisting Tsarist Russia’s tyranny.

And earlier this year, Mr. Langworth formally accepted the invitation from Empire Publishing Group, moving from ”The Times” to ”Economist,” officially assuming the position of editor-in-chief.

Perhaps the term ”move” might sound a bit uncomfortable, given the controlling relationship between Empire Publishing Group and ”The Times,” the board of directors of Empire Publishing Group would prefer to call it an internal promotion.

In the seventh edition of ”The Times,” the inner column folds of ”Economist,” the front-page advertisements of ”The British” and ”Spark,” almost everyone familiar with the city’s rhythm saw the same striking wording:

”The arsenal of the learned, the navigation chart for thinkers.”

—— Formed by the joint cooperation of ”The British,” ”Spark,” ”Nature,” ”Economist,” and England Electromagnetic Telegraph Company, Empire Publishing Group is set to be grandly listed on the London Stock Exchange by July 1835, issuing its first round of shares publicly.

Empire Publishing Group’s subscription announcement was published less than a week, and six banks in the Financial City had already come forward to express their willingness to shoulder the remainder shares after the first round of placement. Additionally, two insurance companies privately stated their hope to enter Empire Publishing’s board observation seats through equity subscription agreements after the formal listing.

And the core of all this is just a number: sixty thousand British Pounds.

Neither the highest valuation nor the lowest, but a remarkably cautious value, even appearing slightly conservative in the eyes of some stockbrokers.

For according to the IPO materials disclosed by Empire Publishing, the company expects total annual revenues in 1835 to reach twenty-seven thousand British Pounds, with a net profit of approximately four thousand British Pounds, priced at fifteen times earnings ratio, after deducting yet-to-be-amortized depreciation costs and risks of equity reevaluation at ”The Times,” ultimately landing at the sixty thousand pounds figure.