The air on both sides of the long table grew heavy.
Everyone present was a shrewd veteran of the business world.
They keenly caught the signal behind the Eldest Miss's act of calmly sipping her tea.
This was a silent form of approval.
Once the Coordination Office that Satsuki had just announced was established, it would instantly become the most powerful department within the group.
To sit in that position and audit these high-ranking regional officials, a simple appointment from the Eldest Miss would be followed, but it would not be enough to truly convince everyone.
The Eldest Miss needed to use the mouths of these executives to test the quality of this newly appointed corrector.
Maki had to show fangs sharp enough to keep everyone at this long table in line.
The people in the room exchanged subtle glances.
Matsumoto Kouji, the President of Semiconductor and Precision Manufacturing, was the first to break the silence.
He placed both hands on the table, and his posture was very respectful.
"Miss Maki," Matsumoto's tone was steady.
"The establishment of the Coordination Office is indeed a great benefit to the group's strategic planning."
"However, when I actually execute overseas mergers and acquisitions or underlying infrastructure projects, I often face extremely complex real-world environments."
Matsumoto looked directly at Maki.
"To acquire overseas technical assets, we need to pay huge sums of settlement money to local unions."
"To open up logistics nodes, we need to pay various mediation fees to different factions."
"These expenses are all friction costs that cannot be publicly disclosed."
"If the Coordination Office relies solely on rigid book figures and compliance laws to conduct audits, it will inevitably block these necessary expenditures."
"That would lead to the complete paralysis of front-end business."
He adopted a posture of seeking advice.
"I would like to ask, under your leadership, how will the Coordination Office balance this contradiction between numerical compliance and real-world business?"
This was an extremely realistic business problem.
Water that is too clear has no fish, and requiring the books to be completely clean in business competition would be the same as tying one's own hands.
All eyes were fixed on Maki's shoulders.
Facing the scrutinizing gazes that felt almost tangible, Maki took a deep breath.
She stood up from her side chair and walked to one end of the long table.
She forcibly suppressed the trace of unease in her heart.
She knew that this was the only chance of her life.
The Eldest Miss had placed the opportunity in front of her and given her that beam of light.
If she could not grasp this chance, she probably would not be able to endure her previous life ever again.
"President Matsumoto."
"When you were acquiring an optical component factory in Europe last month, you paid three million dollars in consulting fees to a local union leader through a third-party PR firm."
"This money was recorded as market research expenditure in the general ledger."
The corner of Matsumoto's eye twitched slightly.
This hidden expenditure had not even been detected during the Finance Department's preliminary audit.
"In my model, gray expenditures within the tolerance threshold are defined as reasonable friction costs."
Maki looked directly at Matsumoto Kouji.
"As long as the subsidiary ultimately achieves its macro-strategic goals and the return on investment rate of this friction cost meets the minimum requirements for capital input, the Coordination Office will allow all gray losses within the model's threshold to pass."
She looked at Matsumoto and gave the first rule.
"The standard for the Coordination Office's audit is very simple: whether the project has deviated from the group's strategy."
"As long as your funds are indeed used to break down the barriers of a merger, no matter how unclear the books are, the Coordination Office will stamp them as compliant for you."
The executives in the conference room nodded slightly.
"To ensure that this tolerance is not abused," Maki immediately introduced the second shackle.
"The Coordination Office's financial audit system will be integrated in real-time with the physical intelligence network of the Saionji Information System, or SIS."
"A double-blind cross-verification will be implemented."
She glanced at Masato.
"If you reimburse three million dollars in consulting fees, SIS will dispatch intelligence personnel to verify on-site whether that European union has truly stopped its strike."
"The Coordination Office will ensure that the physical operational results of the subsidiary precisely correspond with the headquarters' strategic instructions."
Managing Director Endo sat in the first seat on the right.
After listening to Maki's two rules, he slowly rubbed the tabletop with his fingertips.
He actually recognized this young girl.
When she was being marginalized, he thought she was just a slightly talented misfit.
There were actually quite a few people like this.
Although their individual abilities were higher than average, if they could not integrate into group actions, the results they produced were sometimes worse than those of ordinary people.
But he had not expected that she would have the potential to be noticed by the Eldest Miss.
In that case, let him test her mettle as well.
Endo sat upright and immediately asked a question.
"Miss Maki."
"If long-term strategy requires a certain subsidiary to engage in a price war and actively bear large losses, while the year-end bonuses of all executives are directly linked to departmental profits, individual managers are very likely to feign compliance while secretly defying loss-making instructions to protect their own bonuses."
Endo's voice was low.
"No matter how strictly the Coordination Office audits, it cannot force a rational manager to actively damage their own interests."
"Even if it could, it would incur huge monitoring costs and reduce efficiency."
"How would you solve this?"
Maki turned her head and looked at this financial steward of the group.
"Managing Director Endo, the third rule of the Coordination Office is called Internal Transfer Pricing."
Maki spoke extremely fast.
"At the same time the Coordination Office issues a strategic loss instruction, the system will simultaneously calculate a strategic loss subsidy curve based on market capacity and the intensity of the price war."
"Every yen of loss generated on a subsidiary's financial statements due to the execution of strategic goals will be fully covered directly by the headquarters' capital pool."
"This subsidy will be directly credited to the subsidiary's current profits."
"We will use the headquarters' funds to directly buy out the local interests of each department."
"This will effectively ensure that the year-end bonuses of all executives who resolutely execute instructions are not affected in any way."
Maki looked at everyone.
"The Coordination Office is not just a corrector."
"It is also the calculation hub that ensures your personal interests are not damaged while you execute the strategy."
Both sides of the long table fell completely silent.
The executives looked at this young girl in black-rimmed glasses, and all the doubts in their hearts gradually dissipated, replaced by a sense of clarity.
She had precisely hit the core of capital and human nature.
Using capital subsidies to address greed, using double-blind cross-verification to lock down the bottom line, and using gray-scale tolerance to release execution power.
Only at this moment did they completely understand the profound meaning behind the Eldest Miss's choice of her.
An organization like the Coordination Office, which holds great auditing power, is very easy to offend people.
Ordinary employees would not dare to audit the books of these high-ranking regional officials, while senior executives were deeply intertwined with each other, easily falling into factions and social obligations, causing audits to become mere formalities.
But Saionji Maki, as a member of the Saionji Family, naturally possessed the bloodline's legal basis for auditing books.
No executive could use their rank to suppress her.
At the same time, she was a pure data fanatic who had been marginalized by the family for a long time and looked down on social obligations.
This kind of family outsider who was not afraid of offending anyone and only recognized objective data and capital logic was the most perfect person to execute internal correction.
No one raised any more objections, and they lowered their heads in sincere conviction.
Satsuki put down the bone china teacup in her hand.
Looking at everyone's reaction, she nodded with satisfaction.
"Since none of you have any objections, the Coordination Office's audit standards are settled."
"In addition."
Satsuki turned her head and cast her gaze toward Fujita Tsuyoshi, who had been standing in the back like a shadow.
"To compensate for Maki's lack of seniority and execution experience, I appoint Fujita Tsuyoshi to concurrently serve as the Special Mission Supervisor of the Coordination Office."
"In the event that a subsidiary resists a resolution of the Coordination Office or refuses to cooperate with underlying data penetration, Fujita will be responsible for forcibly taking over that department at the physical level."
One civil, one martial.
The data correction and physical enforcement formed the dual-core architecture of the Coordination Office.
Satsuki stood up.
"As of today, the Coordination Office will comprehensively take over the procurement accounting of the group's core projects and the compliance review of major merger and acquisition cases."
She looked at the executives on both sides of the long table and paused slightly.
"I said just now that the Coordination Office tolerates friction costs within the threshold."
"I will not question you establishing private funds below, as long as it does not affect your KPIs."
Her gaze turned cold and landed on Eguchi Tokuhiro, the President of Saionji Construction.
"However, if someone dares to stuff inferior rebar into the load-bearing walls of certain places just to pocket a few tens of millions of yen in price difference, what then?"
"Would we allow that kind of trick to satisfy private greed to threaten the security and strategy of the group's core assets?"
A layer of cold sweat instantly broke out on Eguchi Tokuhiro's back.
He immediately lowered his head, avoiding Satsuki's gaze.
The Eldest Miss was clearly pointing at him.
Could people really be bold enough to put inferior screws in load-bearing walls?
Some people had far too much nerve.
If he could not find these people, his last name would not be Eguchi anymore.
Satsuki withdrew her gaze.
She turned around and walked toward Maki, who was sitting on the side chair.
She stopped in front of Maki, reached out her right hand, and handed over a document with red annotations.
"Maki."
Maki immediately reached out both hands to receive the document.
Satsuki looked at her.
"Go."
"Twist the crooked tracks back to the right path."
"For the group, for the family, or for me."
Maki gripped the document in her hand tightly.
She took half a step back from the side chair, with her legs together, standing straight.
Then, she faced Satsuki and bowed deeply.
It was a standard ninety-degree bow.
Her upper body was parallel to the ground, and she did not straighten up for a long time.
"As you command, Eldest Miss."