Hollywood Hunter

Probably aware that Westeros is no longer in close contact with the Reynolds Nabisco Group, the Hearst family delayed until October 3 before giving a reply to Simon's conditions.

William Hearst III did not intend to share the news resources of the San Francisco Chronicle, but said that the Hearst Group's Los Angeles Herald on the west coast could cooperate with Igreat in all aspects.

"Los Angeles Herald" sounds like a serious newspaper, but in fact it is similar to the "New York Post" under News Corp. It mainly reports social news and gossip entertainment.

The position of Eaglet Portal in news is a comprehensive information platform, because the current stage is mainly for the wealthy middle-class elite, so it is more professional and serious in the pursuit of news content. Although there will be entertainment news, Simon has no idea of ​​turning the Eaglet portal into an entertainment gossip portal.

Most importantly, William Hirst III took out the "Los Angeles Herald" to cooperate with Igreat, but the fundamental reason was to "extend" the newspaper, because the Hearst Group had originally planned to continue this The newspaper with poor performance for many years has been shut down. Now, if it can obtain financial support through the cooperation with Igreat, this newspaper can undoubtedly continue to exist.

It can be said that Hearst III has no sincerity at all.

Simon then took a step back and told Hearst III through Rebold. The Eaglet portal only needs to get the content sharing of the domestic news section of the San Francisco Chronicle, other international news, local news, entertainment news, sports news, etc. , Igreat doesn't need it.

The result was still rejected.

On the other hand, after more than a month of negotiations, AOL finally reached an exclusive agreement with three regional telecom operators, Bell Atlantic, Bell Pacific and NYNEX.

Negotiations on the agreement can be described as ups and downs, during which a single user's $1.50 buyout offer was once deadlocked. The three operators united and insisted that AOL must provide an exclusive fee of $1.50 for each user of the three networks, which is 50% more than the $1 price expected by the AOL team.

When the three operators thought they completely grasped AOL and the Westeros company behind the company, Steve Case used a split strategy to accidentally break the situation, claiming that if the three operators insisted on the $1.50 buyout offer , AOL is unable to support this expense and can only choose two of the three companies.

You only need to open your own line network. With AOL's size at this time, you can get a total of tens of millions of dollars at almost no cost. In addition, with the development of AOL in a few years, the negotiated price is not bad Re-negotiated, the three operators actually did not care so much about the business.

After the splitting case in 1984, the Bell system was unable to remain single-minded after all. After confirming that Steve Case was not making false threats, the three companies finally made concessions.

Therefore, the final transaction price was confirmed to be 1.3 US dollars.

The three operators of Bell Pacific, Bell Atlantic and NYNEX, including home users and commercial users, have a total user scale of 23.61 million, and the total exclusive fee that needs to be paid initially is 30.69 million per year. In addition, the exclusive agreement period is 10 years, which is only half of the initial expectation. The parties to the agreement re-negotiate the exclusive fee price every two years, and the price increase shall not exceed 50% each time.

After the agreement is signed, AOL will be able to directly use the line networks of the three operators to develop its own Internet access services. However, the three operators will not provide additional equipment and technical support for AOL outside of the existing line network.

If AOL has related needs, additional fees must be paid.

Although the terms of the contract are very biased towards the three operators, as long as the exclusive agreement can be signed, Simon sees it as a victory.

AOL’s user growth has increased rapidly in recent months. However, the three operators obviously still did not realize the huge potential of the Internet industry, just as HP did not realize that its own employee named Wozniak invented that personal The importance of computers is the same. Later printer giant Xerox also made the same mistake. The first graphical interface operating system developed was only exchanged for a "very convenient" evaluation by the company's president, and then it was copied to two companies. , One is called Apple and the other is called Microsoft.

Calculating based on the user scale of the three operators at this time, even the five renegotiated prices have increased by 50%, and AOL finally paid less than $200 million in exclusive fees each year. But if it consumes more than 20 million users, AOL can earn billions of dollars in revenue every year by relying solely on Internet access services.

What's more, within 10 years, as long as the control of the US telecommunications industry can be reopened as in the original time and space, Simon has enough confidence that the current vine-state AOL can swallow the few big trees that are attached at this time.

Simon has been discussing acquisition plans for the two companies with the company team in recent days.

Because there is no need to hurry, I still live in Greenwich with Janet every day.

Today is October 5th, Friday, and just arrived at the headquarters of Westeros in Manhattan in the morning. James Rebald took a copy of the newspaper and followed him to the office, saying: "Simon, look at this ."

Simon sat down behind his desk, took the copy of the newspaper, and couldn't help frowning just by scanning the headline.

The photocopy is an article called "Beware of emerging Internet telecommunications that may fall into a monopoly pattern." The commentary's goal happens to be the exclusive agreement that AOL recently signed with the three major operators.

As for the content, it is obvious just by looking at the title.

However, this is not the most important thing. The point is that this article is from the San Francisco Chronicle.

After scanning the article roughly, Simon looked up and said, "The Hirst family doesn't want to pay any price."

AOL is still only a company with less than 500,000 users, not to mention AT-T, even any of the seven Bells, at this time, AOL is definitely a behemoth. Moreover, similar exclusivity agreements are not originally created by AOL. Many companies operating telecommunications peripheral services will sign exclusivity agreements with these giants in order to maintain their market advantages. Internet access services also belong to the peripheral industries of telecommunications.

However, the "San Francisco Chronicle" directly gave AOL a big label of suspected monopoly.

The influence of the AT-T split case that year has not completely dissipated. Telecom monopoly is still a relatively sensitive topic, and most companies do not want to touch such molds.

Therefore, the purpose of the Hearst family to do this is obvious.

Probably he was aware of Simon’s voluntary concession in this incident and rejected the cooperation between the two parties on the content sharing of the San Francisco Chronicle. After delaying until now, William Hirst III probably lost his patience and simply gave it. Simon made him take the initiative to withdraw from the warning.

James also showed a wry smile and asked: "What shall we do now?"

Simon threw a copy of the newspaper on the desk in front of him and said, "Call Reynolds Nabesque, and we will exit."

James was a little surprised: "Play now?"

Simon nodded and said in a flat tone: "Fight, there is no need to procrastinate, since the Hurst family doesn't want to cooperate with us at all, then forget it."

James actually didn't want to have a conflict with the Hearst family. Originally, he was worried that Simon would be young and vigorous. Seeing him so peacefully and voluntarily gave up, James actually gave birth to some faint resentment towards the Hearst family.

However, James also understands that starting today, the Hearst family is completely on the blacklist of their own boss.

However, the Hearst family are not those of Daenerys Entertainment's colleagues in Hollywood. Such a family with a century of accumulation and a huge paper media network is destined to be something that many people are afraid to provoke.

When James left, Simon began to calmly prepare for the morning meeting.

According to the latest news, this week, Panasonic President Akio Furui and MCA Chairman Lu Vasalman had a telephone conversation. Perhaps, the next Panasonic acquisition of MCA will have changes that Simon expected.

Once this happens, Daenerys Entertainment must make an advance.

Combining the information in memory and the current situation, Simon felt that the reason why the acquisition of MCA by Panasonic in the original time and space was officially publicized for a few months was probably mainly due to the lack of competitors. Since no one is competing, Panasonic can naturally grind with MCA.

Now, Daenerys Entertainment is watching. Although Panasonic is not so committed to this acquisition due to the domestic economic situation in Japan, it should still hope to buy MCA, so it will not continue to delay for too long. .

All aspects of MCA work have been completed ahead of schedule, and the morning meeting was still about the acquisition of Bell Atlantic.

For more than two months, affected by the war in Kuwait, oil prices continued to rise, and the US stock market continued to fall.

The latest market value of Bell Atlantic has slipped to the edge of 5 billion US dollars. Yesterday there was only 5.03 billion US dollars left. Compared with the beginning of the war, it continued to fall by more than 10%. Now it is undoubtedly the best time to shoot.

Relying on its own sufficient assets as collateral, the Westeros team has solved the problem of the source of funds. Several banks secretly contacted, the cumulative amount of funds willing to provide Westeros has reached 10 billion US dollars.

Such a large-scale loan application is definitely unavoidable in the circle.

Therefore, banks have been testing whether Simon intends to rely solely on loans to acquire the company and keep the huge amount of money overseas.

This kind of guess is actually very reasonable.

The transfer of overseas assets back to China requires a lump-sum payment of 28% of huge asset profits tax. In comparison, the annual interest rate for obtaining funds through loans is only about 5%. If overseas funds can be operated properly, even if they generate 10% of the annual income, it is very cost-effective to do so.

Simon actually considered this option.

But finally gave up.

On the one hand, in the next few years, apart from North America, no market will be able to carry billions of dollars of investment that can bring sufficient benefits to Simon.

On the other hand, this money, to be precise, is the tax when the money is transferred back to the country, and it can also be regarded as a bargaining chip, a bargaining chip that can promote the federal government to approve the Simon acquisition plan.

After all, a one-time capital gains tax of US$2 billion is definitely not a small amount that can be ignored at will for the federal government, which has a serious fiscal deficit. If the federal government disagrees with Simon's simultaneous acquisition of MCA and Bell Atlantic, he will definitely continue to keep the funds overseas.

"We have bought 2.7% of Bell Atlantic's stock, and we will be able to hold 4.9% of the shares before the end of the month. However, on Bell Atlantic's side, the main problem we face is actually the management. If we can obtain the chairman of Bell Atlantic With the cooperation of CEO Raymond Smith, with the support of sufficient funds, this acquisition should go very smoothly. I don’t think that given the current economic environment and the nature of Bell Atlantic’s own company, other competitors will jump. Come out and compete with us for this company."

Having dinner with James at noon, Simon heard him say this and nodded: "Wait for the end of the month. If the time is right, I will meet with Raymond Smith in person."

James said: "Raymond Smith is very interested in literature and drama. You two can definitely talk."

Simon has also seen the Raymond Smith information collected by the company and said: “It’s just not enough. If it’s just because of similar topics, he will nod and agree to Westeros’ acquisition of Bell Atlantic, and I will also consider the acquisition. Do you want to keep him after you finish?"

James affirmed: "Raymond Smith's ability is beyond doubt, but if you don't expect the two of you to reach a cooperation because of similar topics, we will still have to work harder."

Simon smiled and said, "If everything goes too smoothly for a multi-billion-dollar business, I will doubt if this is a trap."

The two chatted about these things. After having lunch, Simon rushed to the East Coast headquarters of Daenerys Entertainment in Greenwich Village according to the schedule. After a week was no longer in Los Angeles, Hollywood still accumulated a lot of things that he needed to deal with.

After arriving at one o’clock in the afternoon until nearly four o’clock, I was busy for three hours. After roughly finishing the work accumulated in a week, Simon leaned on his office leather chair and picked up a plan for an Antarctic documentary produced by Gaomen Pictures. The draft looked through.

This was triggered by Janet’s promise to Little Gemma when she went to Sofia’s house for lunch last week.

Janet originally only planned to let some people who went to the Antarctic take some video tapes for the little girl back. However, Simon remembered the "Emperor Penguin Diary" that had set a record for the box office of the documentary in his memory, so he was serious about shooting an Antarctic documentary Plan.

However, Simon doesn't know the Antarctic, so he plans to test a documentary first, train the team, and then come up with the filming plan of "Emperor Penguin Diary" in his memory.

Autumn is in the northern hemisphere, and spring is in the southern hemisphere.

Now we are ready to start shooting in the Antarctic in summer, and we will end the shooting in autumn in the southern hemisphere.

Looking at the plan in his hand, Simon suddenly thought of Sophia again.

Sophia has been preparing for the Gucci brand event tomorrow Saturday in Manhattan recently, and his work today has been completed.

After hesitating for a moment, Simon dialed the number of the woman's mobile phone.

After chatting for a few words, it didn't seem to be so busy over there. Simon asked the woman if he wanted to have coffee together. The woman reminded him that he had quit coffee for a long time.

Then it was a little embarrassing.

Then, Simon simply set up the boss's arrogance and asked the woman to wait for him in his penthouse on Madison Avenue, where he had something to discuss.

What is Sophia asking about?

Very curious tone.

This, of course, will come later, can't the boss who is the boss still can't find anything to do for the employees!