Hollywood Hunter

Unlike sunny Los Angeles and drizzle Seattle, New York is still in the coldest time of the year.

The weather is short in winter.

Simon arrived on the east coast and rushed from the JFK Airport to his apartment on Fifth Avenue. It was already dark.

Janet was not the only person in the apartment, Sofia Fessi also came from Europe yesterday.

Simon is still working, but Janet and many people around him are busy preparing for the wedding in early March.

The wedding has been confirmed to be held in Melbourne, and the guest list has been initially finalized. The Johnston family has also specially prepared several charter flights for this purpose.

Sophia came to New York this time for weddings. The Gucci design team was busy designing wedding dresses after Simon and Janet’s wedding date was confirmed. The housekeeper came to discuss some production details with Janet this time.

Last night, Jeannetra discussed the wedding dress style until the early morning, and Simon still woke up early the next day.

I fumbled for my watch and glanced at it. It was still 6:50 in the morning on the East Coast.

The woman in her arms noticed Simon's movement, and squeezed around him tighter. She opened her small mouth in her sleep and bit on the man's shoulder, and there was no movement again.

Feeling Janet's obsession, Simon gave up the idea of ​​getting up and closed his eyes again.

Winter is indeed a season for laziness.

Woke up again, it was almost nine o'clock in the morning, and Janet was no longer around.

After Simon dressed and washed, he opened the curtains of the bedroom, and the drowsy Central Park was flooded with the soft sunshine that is unique to this season, pale and weak, and seemed to be reluctant to do so.

At least it was a sunny day.

When they came downstairs, Janet and Sophia had just prepared breakfast. Seeing Simon, Janet leaned over and kissed the man, and said, "I'm talking about calling you to get up."

Simon hugged the woman to say good morning, said hello to Sophia, and sat down at the table.

Sophia brought the breakfast and put a few of today’s newspapers by Simon. Then he sat down. During the meal, he talked about some Gucci things. The February fashion week is coming soon, and the housekeeper is this time. It is not leisurely, and I will return to Europe tomorrow.

After breakfast, Sophia rushed to the headquarters of Gucci's US branch. Simon and Janet did not arrange work plans today. Mao Dong was as tired of enjoying the world of two in the apartment.

"...I have already let people start preparing. That day, there will be a maze of flowers on the outside of our wedding venue in Yarra Valley Park. All kinds of flowers are definitely very beautiful..."

In a living room on the second floor of the duplex apartment, Janet was holding a thick folder containing various wedding planning materials and talking to Simon Balabalti.

Looking at the woman's blushing face when she talked about it, Simon smiled: "Don't women have premarital phobia? You seem to have no reaction at all."

Janet approached Simon affectionately and said: "Only a woman who wonders if she has met the right man will have premarital phobia, I don't have it."

Simon heard the words, smiled and kissed Janet's tender cheek, still feeling a little bit more, and then reached out and hugged the woman.

Janet quickly began to respond.

The two entangled for a moment, and it quickly turned into a scene unsuitable for children.

Tired of spending a whole day in the apartment, Sophia did not come back to disturb them in the evening. The next day was Monday, and she had to continue working.

On Saturday morning, Sheila Ward told Simon that Saddam’s speech at the Arab Cooperation Council’s meeting was unclear. Therefore, the Cersei Capital team in New York is based on this news and many of the recent mainstream European and American countries. Trend, began to deploy in the oil futures market in advance.

As hedge funds have flourished in the past two years, Cersei Capital is not the only one staring at the oil futures market.

However, for Saddam’s statement, many hedge funds believe that international oil prices will begin to rise in the next period of time, but Cersei Capital is betting that oil prices will fall.

In Simon’s memory, because Saddam had expressed his “non-cooperation” gesture with the West since last year, and the Bush family was in power by the Bush family, which was closely linked to the oil giants, the European and American oil groups finally decided to take action against Iraq. Hands on.

The first step is not a war, but a domestic economy that has become increasingly vulnerable after the Iran-Iraq War.

The Iraqi economy is deeply dependent on oil. The best way to combat the country’s fragile domestic economy is to push the international oil price down.

Therefore, countries such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, which have close relations with European and American oil groups, will take the form of substantial increase in production in the next few months to lower international oil prices. This is also the most direct reason for Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

In the original time and space, the international crude oil price plummeted from 19 US dollars in early 1990 to 13 US dollars in just a few months before the Kuwait War, a drop of more than 30%.

After the outbreak of the Kuwait War, international crude oil prices jumped directly from a trough of 13 dollars to a high of 40 dollars, an increase of more than 200%.

Then, when the Gulf War broke out, when most crude oil speculators thought that international crude oil prices would continue to rise, the war ended quickly with a devastating speed. International oil prices soon fell back to less than 20 US dollars. Most people did not expect this result.

For more than half a year, the international crude oil prices have risen and fallen continuously, which has also caused countless investors engaged in crude oil futures trading to become rich or ruined overnight.

It can be said that if it were not for the prophetic advantage of the reborn, even if Simon could roughly predict the next situation, he would not dare to put too much bet in this turmoil.

Otherwise, it may only take one wrong judgment, and the original huge gains may turn into losses.

Just like the Quantum Fund in the original time and space, Soros was invincible in the Asian market, but because of a mistaken judgment of Russia's economic situation, he suffered a huge loss of more than 3 billion US dollars in the second year.

In fact, the reason why Cersei Capital accepted North American funds to join this time is to minimize the occurrence of man-made variables. At the same time, it can also obtain some useful inside information through this exchange of benefits.

Simon stayed in New York until Wednesday.

For two consecutive nights, he was attending a fundraising cocktail party specially organized by Cersei Capital. The funds of Cersei Fund Management Company are already in place. These two cocktail parties are mainly for the Apollo Management Company and Lawrence Fink under the charge of Leon Black. Black Rock Asset Management Company.

The Apollo Management Company has focused on the securities assets of the Colombian Savings and Credit Bank, which are being auctioned and liquidated after the government has taken over. The first plan is to raise 1 billion US dollars. At the same time, the Apollo Management Company team does not intend to eat alone, but decided to cooperate with Some other financial giants on Wall Street cooperate.

In doing so, on the one hand, it can reduce risks, on the other hand, it can also eliminate Wall Street's hostility to Cersei Capital, and at the same time establish Cersei Capital's network of relationships on Wall Street.

Most financial giants on Wall Street are in a state of competition and cooperation with each other.

The main reason why the once powerful Dechung Securities Company went bankrupt and liquidated in just a few months after it fell into the crisis is that Dechong Securities has no friends on Wall Street at all.

In the previous ten years of junk bond issuance of more than 80 billion US dollars, Dechung Securities has been eating alone, and refused to give up a large amount of issuance costs to other companies, so that when Dechung Securities fell into a crisis in the second half of last year, it turned to other Wall Street counterparts Asked for help, but no one was willing to lend a helping hand.

Compared with Apollo Management’s first phase of the US$1 billion fundraising plan, Cersei Capital intends to raise funds for Black Rock Asset Management to be equivalent to Black Rock’s existing funds, reaching US$3 billion.

The reason for this difference is mainly due to the difference in business risks between the two companies.

Apollo Management is responsible for leveraged buyouts, equity investment, and condor investment operations, and you may lose a lot if you are not paying attention. Compared with the mainstream stocks, bonds and fixed income product investment business of Black Rock Asset Management, the degree of risk is very high. Low, of course, the income is also very low, which requires relying on scale to win.

Busy, time has come to the last day of January.

Heading back to Los Angeles in the afternoon, Simon spent the entire morning at the Daenerys Entertainment New York branch in Greenwich.

The TV spring file has been quietly opened. Although the annual TV program promotion season is in May, since the beginning of the year, various TV program production companies have begun to look for TV programs for the new year.

The Daenerys TV company under the charge of Robert Iger produced 10 TV shows last year, 4 of which were reality shows that Simon personally found, 3 TV series taken over by New World Entertainment, and 3 brand new series opened last year.

At the moment, Daenerys Television’s main income is still 4 reality shows such as "Who Will Be a Millionaire". Last year’s 3 new dramas, the TV network only renewed one, and the other 3 old dramas are in After the file last fall, one was cut again because of the low ratings.

Moreover, in the 4 reality shows, the cbs platform "The Beverly Wife" also encountered some problems.

Phenomenal reality shows are never so easy to appear. In Simon's memory, there are only a few reality shows that can reach the level of familiarity, whether it is in the 1990s or after the new century. "Who Will Be a Millionaire" and "Survivor" belong to this category, and "Big Brother" is a bit inferior, but in the past two years, there has been no more popular project than these few reality shows.

However, the original "Beverly Wife", which belongs to the basic cable station, is not so lucky.

Joining the public station sequence, compared to "Who Will Be a Millionaire", "Survivor" and "Big Brother", the ratings data of "The Beverly Wife" was originally ranked at the bottom.

At the beginning, cbs also launched two reality shows at the same time. Although the ratings were lower, they were barely sustainable. This made cbs's reliance on "The Beverly Wife" not so strong.

Therefore, the second half of the second season of "Beverly's Sweet Wife" has not yet been played, and cbs is trying to lower the renewal price of this reality show again.

Daenerys in Greenwich are in separate buildings.

Simon listened to Robert Iger's introduction of the situation in the conference room, knocked on the table for a moment, and said: "In this case, then cancel the cooperation with cbs."

Robert Iger was a little surprised: "Simon, even if the offer is reduced by another 20%, we are still profitable and there is no need to cancel."

Simon glanced at the other TV executives in the conference room and waved for the others to go out. Then he said to Iger: "Bob, for "The Beverly Wife", I was actually planning to make a complete wife. a series of."

Robert Iger nodded and said, "I know, you mentioned it before. However, Simon, this is not realistic. The four major TV networks cannot give us too much time to broadcast a whole series of reality shows."

"So, we need to find a separate platform for this series."

Robert Iger also knew that Cersei Capital had hoarded a large amount of funds overseas, and blurted out: "Simon, are you planning to buy a TV network?"

"It's not the time yet," Simon shook his head and said, "Bob, there are some things that I can't tell you yet, but if everything goes well, we will have our own TV network in the second half of the year. Although it will not reach the four major public televisions. The scale of the Internet, but it is sufficient to accommodate the Jiao Wife series. It just so happens that by using the Jiao Wife series, we can turn our network into a branded female television station."

Having been in the TV industry for a long time, Iger heard Simon say this and quickly understood what was going on.

After sorting out the information about a series of media groups in the industry in his memory, Iger tentatively asked: "usa?"

The usa television network, like the cw, amc, and mtv television networks many years later, belongs to the national basic cable television network in the United States.

The current usa television network is still jointly held by Paramount Communications and mca, each accounting for 50% of the shares.

Although the brilliance of the US after the new century has been completely obscured by TV networks such as cw, amc, and mtv, most of the time it has been half-dead, but in this era, because of the joint support of the two giants, Paramount Communications and mca, US TV The popularity and scale of Netichigan's newly emerging basic wired network are top notch.

Seeing Iger guessed it, Simon did not deny it, smiled and nodded, and exhorted: "Remember to keep this matter confidential."

"of course."

Iger agreed and didn't ask any more questions, but he couldn't help wondering whether Simon's next goal was mca or Paramount Communications.

mca seems easier.

Paramount Communications, Martin Davis has been in power until the death of the former head of the company, and he is reluctant to let go.

The two discussed a few more about "The Sweet Wife of Beverly". Simon handed a folder to Iger and said: "I took the time to see some projects the company is looking for, and selected two of them. You remember that If you want to take it down, you can decide the rest."

Iger took the folder handed over by Simon and opened it, and the planning materials of a sitcom appeared in front of him. The name was printed on the cover, "The Story of Seinfeld".

"The Story of Song Fei", a sitcom that was as popular as "Friends" in the 1990s, this sitcom also set a record of over 70 million viewers in the final episode.

Simon saw the information about this project when he was in Los Angeles. This time he came to New York. Another purpose was to instruct Iger to take down the project. As for the other one, it was the ‘sand’ that Simon added casually.