Hollywood Hunter

The same Sunday, Los Angeles.

Michael Ovitz had watched James Rebald's "Today Show" interview in full at breakfast, and he naturally did not believe James' ambiguous response.

According to recently inquired news, Daenerys Entertainment is preparing to bid for mca, which is an indisputable fact.

Originally planned to spend the weekend with his family, because yesterday the "Hollywood Reporter" suddenly exposed Daenerys Entertainment's acquisition intention and today's "Today Show" interview, Ovitz had to continue working on the weekend.

From the second half of last year to the present, the caa team has been busy for a whole year for the mca acquisition.

If this acquisition fails, not only will the entire team's busy work for a year be spent, but also tens of millions of dollars in loss of consulting fees. These are not what Ovitz wants to see.

However, Ovitz also understands that the problem he faces at this time is very difficult.

During the initial contact between Panasonic and Ovitz last year, Panasonic expressed its willingness to offer up to US$90 for the acquisition of mca, which is equivalent to a total transaction value of US$9 billion based on mca's total equity of close to 100 million shares.

However, as the Japanese economy has continued to deteriorate over the past six months, Panasonic's attitude has become increasingly conservative. On the other hand, the outbreak of the Kuwait War triggered a full decline in the U.S. stock market. At the close of the market last Friday, the stock price of mca had fallen to $36, and it was even more unlikely that Panasonic would bid another $90 per share.

The problem now is that we must speed up the progress of this acquisition and urge Panasonic to further increase its offer for mca.

Before 8 o'clock in the morning, Michael Ovitz arrived at CAA’s headquarters in Century City. The members of the core team of the mca acquisition have also arrived. At the same time, there was also Yonago Keitani, a representative of Panasonic in the acquisition.

A meeting to discuss various countermeasures lasted all morning, and Ovitz also had a phone call with Matsushita President Akio Furui in Osaka at noon.

After Akio Furui became the president of Panasonic in 1986, he has always hoped to enter the United States, but he was suppressed by the conservative founder of Panasonic Konosuke Matsushita before last year.

However, to Ovitz’s disappointment, Akio Furui did not accept his proposal to raise the price per share to $75 to complete the transaction as soon as possible, and he did not abandon the acquisition plan because of Daenerys Entertainment’s competition.

After a busy morning, I finally decided to start a new round of negotiations with mca next Wednesday to further discuss the details of the acquisition.

After lunch, send off Yonago Keitani, the core member of the acquisition team of mca, Michael Ovitz, Bob Goldman, the financial director and co-founder of CAA, and two other executives Sandy Kliman and Ray Kertzman returned to the morning meeting room again.

Panasonic's acquisition attitude is not resolute enough, which makes everyone a little sad.

The crowd gathered around the conference table and waited for the secretary to bring coffee and left. Bob Goldman suddenly said: "Many people in Hollywood shouldn't want to see Daenerys Entertainment expand again."

Sandy Kliman, who helped Ovitz start the caa corporate agency business, said: "So what, do you think Warner, Fox, MGM, and Columbia will jump out to oppose this acquisition?

In this summer, Daenerys Entertainment’s 10 film plans "Sleep with the Enemy" and "Hands Shaking Cradle" have all achieved success. Not only Fox and Disney have benefited from it, Warner, MGM, Columbia and other companies Both have close cooperation with Daenerys Entertainment.

Ray Kertzman said at this time: "There are also the failures of Paramount, "Rocket Expert" and "Firebird Attack". Martin Davis must be very dissatisfied with Westeros."

Sandy Kliman said: "Just the Paramount family is not enough."

Bob Goldman said again at this time: "You made a mistake. It doesn't have to be companies in the same industry that can prevent a studio from being merged. I mean, the three major unions in Hollywood."

Bob Goldman's voice fell, and the other three people in the conference room showed a sudden look.

Daenerys Entertainment had a disagreement with the American Screenwriters Association because of the strike two years ago. At present, Simon Westeros is constantly suppressing star pay through long-term contracts and strictly controlling film production costs on the budget. The development of the studio is advantageous, but it has obviously harmed the interests of the Hollywood screenwriters' union, directors' union and actors' union.

What's more, for two consecutive years, Daenerys Entertainment has accounted for most of the top ten in the US box office list. Such a market share, if it merges with mca, has clearly constituted a monopoly.

If the three major unions simultaneously file a lawsuit against the Federal Department of Justice, coupled with the cooperation of Hollywood studios such as Paramount, the possibility of blocking Daenerys Entertainment’s acquisition should be very high.

"I'm reminded of the proposal made by Senator Peter Brigel, Republican of Texas last Wednesday," Ray Kertzman quickly mentioned another thing. Seeing the other three people looking confused, said: "I'll wait for someone to collect a copy of the information for you. In short, the White House should have no good feelings about Westeros right now. In this case, the Justice Department may not easily pass Daenerys Entertainment's application to acquire mca."

"And last year's Dustin, Cruise and others."

"Matthew Broderick, do you remember that young man?"

"..."

"..."

The four of them talked together for more than ten minutes. Michael Ovitz quickly made a decision and said: "Bob, you and Martin Davis are familiar with each other. Ask him as soon as possible. Sandy and Ray, you two are responsible for contacting people in Washington. I will personally communicate with the three major unions and Dustin."

After finalizing these, the four quickly began to split up.

The weekend passed in a blink of an eye.

September 10th, Monday.

Following last Saturday's "Hollywood Reporter" exposure of Daenerys Entertainment's intention to acquire mca, the "Wall Street Journal" also exposed the progress of the mca acquisition on Monday, stating that the Panasonic acquisition team will officially start the mca this Wednesday negotiation.

Michael Ovitz directly called Lou Vasalman's house after the "Wall Street Journal" news was exposed, accused the other party of leaking the news, and threatened to cancel Wednesday's agenda. Lou Vasalman firmly denied Ovitz’s accusation, and after several disputes, Wednesday’s meeting will be held as usual.

However, after continuous media reports, the news that Daenerys Entertainment and Panasonic may bid for mca is completely put on the table.

On Monday morning, as the North American stock market just opened, mca's stock price began to rise rapidly.

After a day of trading, as of the end of the afternoon, the stock price of mca had soared from $36.75 at the opening to $41.25, an increase of 12%. By the close of Wednesday, the stock price of mca had risen to $46.75, basically returning to the level before the outbreak of the Kuwait War. .

Because of the time difference between the east and west coasts, when Panasonic and mca executives concluded their negotiations on Wednesday, the east coast stock market had closed.

Moreover, things are also showing signs of a sharp turnaround.

Sid Simberg, president of mca, bluntly stated at the press conference after the meeting that pine’s offer lacked sincerity, and that the recent share price of mca was severely undervalued due to force majeure factors. If Panasonic refuses to increase the offer, the transaction between the two parties may be stranded. .

At the same time, Sid Simberg also stated at the press conference that mca is a very good company, and he is very much looking forward to other companies interested in this company.

The purpose of these last words couldn't be more obvious.

The media subsequently continued to expose more specific details of the talks.

Sid Simberg, chairman of mca, expected a price of US$80 per share, but Panasonic was only willing to offer a price of US$60 per share. The gap between the two parties was huge, so the talks ended up unhappy.

Because of the failure of this meeting, mca's stock rally slowed down significantly the next day.

Although it is clear that Panasonic cannot give up the acquisition so easily, and mca will not easily drive away Panasonic, a competitor that can push up its share price, many people still turn their attention to Daenerys Entertainment, looking forward to Simon's shot. .

Having escaped the media attention in the first week of the "Forbes" rich list release, Simon still stayed in New York this week.

When news of the apparent stalemate after the first public meeting between Panasonic and mca came, Simon completely let go of his mind and patiently waited for the right time. During this time, Janet personally helped him choose and arrange one meal after another, receptions, parties and other activities.

Quickly accumulating a huge amount of wealth, it is impossible to have no corresponding network of contacts, and it is not a wise move to completely hand over the network to the executives of the subsidiaries.

Every time Simon goes to Melbourne, the Johnston family will arrange similar activities for Simon to participate. Janet is considered to have completely inherited the family’s vision and skills in network building. A woman can help Simon avoid a lot of useless communication by instinct. For entertainment, there is no need to blindly fumble in and out of various circles like many new rich people.

In order to further confuse the media and the public's attention, Simon also participated with great fanfare in a party hosted by Steve Ross at his home in East Hampton, Long Island.

Immediately afterwards, news appeared in the media that Daenerys Entertainment might seek to merge with Time Warner.

Everyone in the circle knows that Steve Rose is a very powerful person, and Simon will not let go of Daenerys Entertainment's control, so the possibility of the merger of the two companies is very low. However, this world has always had more people who don't know the truth.

After relevant news appeared, Time Warner's stock price also began to rise.

Neither Daenerys Entertainment nor Time Warner have clarified this. Simon is trying to confuse the audience. Rose hopes that Time Warner can show some positives, even if it is a false positive, it can make this Time Warner head. The pressure is reduced a lot.

After the completion of the Time Warner merger after twists and turns at the beginning of this year, due to internal management struggles, the deterioration of the external economic situation, and the substantial increase in corporate liabilities, the synergy of one plus one greater than two that all parties expected before the merger of Time and Warner Bros. It did not appear, and Time Warner's stock price fell all the way.

At present, Time Warner, a media giant with a total asset of close to US$25 billion, has a market value of only more than US$8 billion and a debt of more than US$10 billion. Compared to before the merger, when Paramount Communications tried to intercept this acquisition, it only offered Times to a price of $10.7 billion.

In recent months, some media have compared the Time Warner merger with the Reynolds Nabisco merger the year before.

Frankly speaking, because Time Warner's internal situation is too complicated, even if Steve Rose is willing to sell the company, Simon will not take it lightly.

After two weeks of harassment, Simon left New York again on September 17 and flew to San Francisco on the west coast.

A few days ago, maintaining Larry Ellison’s control over Oracle was used as a bargaining chip in exchange for a total of board seats of this company, and Carol Bartz, who is in charge of the software business of Igreat, was appointed as the bargaining chip. Not aimlessly.

The use of database software on Internet sites is very wide. Letting Carol Bartz serve as Oracle's director can further strengthen the association and cooperation between Oracle database software and Eaglet’s World Wide Web technology.

On the other hand, Oracle's upcoming layoffs are mainly concentrated in the software sales department. It just so happens that Carol Bartz is building Igreat's software sales network. This time, he can pick up a group of available sales staff from Oracle ‘closely’.

Although Oracle has made major mistakes in its sales strategy in the past two years, there is no doubt that its rapid growth in performance is largely due to the Oracle sales team.

In addition, Carol Bartz was inspired by Simon’s memo on Eaglet’s explanation of the concept of “cloud computing”, hoping to turn Eaglet’s software department into a one-stop web-based The technical Internet site technical support company provides users who want to build a website with a full set of solutions involving software and hardware, rather than simply selling related software products.

Unlike the original time and space, Eaglet Corporation almost monopolized the technology patents related to the World Wide Web at this time.

Although Simon kept an open mind as much as possible, considering the explosive growth of Web-based websites in the next few years, just thinking about it, Simon realized that if Carol Bartz’s vision is realized, it will mean What a huge benefit.

Moreover, this is definitely not something that the Yigrete family can accomplish, it must be combined with all the new technology enterprise resources of Westeros.

Of course, this plan cannot be accomplished overnight.

Simon rushed to San Francisco, in addition to listening to Carol Bartz's business plan, but also to mediate the dispute between Carol Bartz and Jeff Bezos again.

For the US$50 million invested in Igreat last time, Simon allocated the bulk of the US$35 million to the network department. Carol Bartz believes that his own software department is the most important at this stage and should be divided. To get more funds, so after Simon left last time, he and Jeff Bezos "struggle with reason", wanting to split the funds equally.

Both Carol Bartz and Jeff Bezos have very strong personalities, and they have even marginalized the CEO of Tim Berners Lee to chief technology in the months since they joined the company. Official status.

Tim Berners Lee is a kind of technical nerd character similar to Apple’s founder Steve Wozniak. He found that he really couldn’t control his two nominal subordinates, so he simply Do not participate in the dispute between the two, and concentrate on the research and development of a series of World Wide Web technology projects that he is responsible for.

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