Hollywood Hunter

Daenerys Entertainment can be described as the biggest winner of this Oscar, but Simon only stayed at the Melisandre party for an hour before leaving quietly.

Just like a scientist who won the Nobel Prize, he is destined to not be excited about a little red flower in the kindergarten.

Over the years, from Sundance to Cannes to Oscar, Simon has accumulated enough honors in movies. More importantly, with Simon's current height, it is difficult for Oscar to attract too much attention from him.

On the second day, the media continued to rant.

However, this time, there is not much controversy over the awards of Daenerys Entertainment related films.

Five best film nominated films, the best film "Unforgivable" in the original time and space, as an old-school western film, is far less competitive than imagined, and the other three are even more just a foil. Therefore, under Daenerys Entertainment's strong public relations offensive, "Scent of a Woman" won the best film The Golden Man can be described as easy.

Al Pacino's best actor is even more well-deserved.

The Hollywood celebrity who rose in the 1970s had already been nominated for six Oscars as of "Scent of a Woman".

Other awards did not cause much disturbance either.

The media even regretted that Daenerys Entertainment's other two outstanding films "Howard Manor" and "Crying Game" only won a few non-core awards.

Of course, even if it has been difficult to cause too many waves in Simon's heart, a series of Oscar awards brought real honor and benefits to Daenerys Entertainment.

After the Oscars, time quickly moved to April.

In Europe, Melisandre's acquisition of Christie's auction house was officially exposed.

Regarding this matter, the British media generally showed a resistive attitude, believing that Christie’s is an iconic company representing Britain’s historical position in the art collection field, and should not be sold to foreign investors. Some fierce media professionals even reported to the United Kingdom. The government petitioned to ban the transaction.

However, in the face of capital, the power of media and public opinion is ultimately somewhat weak.

What's more, the British public's response to this incident is more inclined to watch the excitement: Christie's, which sells tens of millions of pounds worth of collections, is really far away from them.

After the pound crisis last year, the British economy fell into a downturn, and many investors also tended to cash out Christie’s stocks to increase their cash reserves.

Therefore, the transaction was quickly approved by shareholder voting.

Melisandre successfully acquired Christie's, but in North America, Eaglet’s financing plan was not so smooth.

Speaking of which, if you just want to raise funds purely, there are many investors who, like Joseph Lewis, hardly intend to cut prices and are willing to eat 10% of Igreat's stock.

However, the purpose of this financing is not too simple.

After Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs both expressed their clear investment intentions, Eaglet Corporation proposed two financing plans of 5% each, but this has caused dissatisfaction between the two Wall Street investment banks.

Ten percent of Eaglet’s stock is priced at US$1.5 billion. The average investor cannot afford such an offer, but for the two Wall Street giants, they can still afford to raise funds.

Everyone knows that with the development momentum of Eaglet at this time, 1.5 billion U.S. dollars and 10% of the shares are indeed not expensive.

Buy it now and wait until Igreat’s IPO, with the current capital market’s pursuit of technology stocks, it is expected to at least double the return.

Cisco and AOL are the best proof.

Now, the 10% share of equity transfer is not high, but one is split into two to share with others. Of course, the two major investment banks are not satisfied.

However, after several days of negotiation, Simon Westero clearly did not intend to compromise.

In addition, the differences between the two sides do not stop there.

The 10% of Eaglet’s shares sold were still Class A shares with only one-tenth of the voting rights. The two investment banks received this batch of shares, not only could they only get 1% of Eaglet’s shares. Voting rights and no board seats.

In other words, after the two investment banks invested a huge amount of 1.5 billion U.S. dollars, they still have no right to speak with Igreat.

This is also intolerable by the consistently strong Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

Simon did not make concessions for the dual-shareholding structure. However, after negotiations, Simon also agreed that Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley would each get a board seat after Igreat’s IPO.

Prior to this, because Eaglet was still a completely private company, there was no board of directors.

After several discussions, the two sides reluctantly reached an agreement in this regard.

Then came the issue of 1.5 billion dollars in funding itself.

For this money, the original plan provided by Eaglet was 500 million US dollars as financing transferred to Eaglet’s account for the development of Eaglet’s own development, and the other billion US dollars were returned to Westeros. All, be regarded as the proceeds from the sale of 10% of the equity.

After all, this equity transfer, if it is said that Westeros sold 10% of Igreat shares, it is actually quite accurate.

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley certainly would not agree.

Although US$500 million is already a lot of money, for Eaglet, if it was the same as the previous year, it might be burned out in one year.

Once funds are in short supply, another financing must be carried out. At that time, whether it is equity financing or bond financing, the costs will be spread to Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, who have become shareholders of Igreat.

The best plan in the eyes of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley is, of course, that all the 1.5 billion US dollars go to Eaglet's account.

However, for the two investment banks, Westero's plan is also reasonable.

1.5 billion U.S. dollars, after all, is a considerable amount of money.

If it were the two investment banks themselves, of course they would not be willing to spend all this money on Igreat.

In fact, Goldman Sachs and Morgan executives were wrong this time.

Simon has no direct plan to get a share of this huge sum of money. The reason for proposing this distribution plan is just a bargaining chip.

The Westeros system is not short of money.

This is one point.

On the other hand, if these billion dollars are included in the Westeros account as the proceeds from the sale of stocks, they will be subject to capital gains tax.

At the federal tax rate at this time, one billion U.S. dollars would need to contribute 280 million U.S. dollars in taxes to the IRS.

Simon did not intend to make this tax-friendly citizen.

In contrast, if he really needs additional funds, he is also more inclined to obtain loans from the bank.

The more you get to the top of this social pyramid, the more you can understand that you can go farther by spending other people's money on your own affairs.

The 1.5 billion US dollars this time is actually quite a lot for Eaglet. Eaglet already has enough revenue scale to provide itself with a steady stream of funds, and Simon does not. Let Yigrete's plan to burn more money, on the contrary, after this financing, he will further strengthen the financial supervision of Yigrete's company to avoid wanton profligacy.

In this way, just this 1.5 billion US dollars is enough for Eaglet to spend three to five years.

Taking into account the 1995 IPO, Eaglet’s cash reserves will be more abundant.

It is not a good thing that too much money is not spent as soon as possible.

Fortunately, Eaglet already has its own venture capital department, Simon’s plan. After completing this financing, Eaglet will also greatly increase the intensity of foreign investment while completing its own development. Become one of the important venture capital funds in Silicon Valley.

Malibu, Daenerys Studios.

The time is Tuesday, April 6th.

In the morning, the Pixar team on the second floor of the studio spent two hours, mainly watching samples of "The Lion King". The production of Pixar’s second 3D animation movie has completed 80% of the progress, but because The cumbersome production process of an animated film will be officially completed in August. Fortunately, the film schedule is the end of the year, and August is not too late.

Take the female assistant back to Du Mejia Manor for dinner at noon.

After lunch, the female assistant's day's work is basically over. Janet is left behind. The two women plan to go shopping together. Simon returns to the studio, and Girl A takes over Jennifer's work.

"Boss, this is the memorandum of the meeting between Vice President Al Gore and the executives of major telecommunications companies that just came from Washington this morning."

The information superhighway plan, of course, will not just pass a bill. It also requires the federal government to take concrete measures.

Simon had known in advance that the purpose of this meeting between Vice President Al Gore and the heads of major telecommunications companies was to discuss telecommunications companies' increase in infrastructure investment in the Internet industry.

The heads of Verizon Telecom and AOL of the Westeros system both attended the meeting.

The share of the US$400 billion in investment in the information superhighway plan in the two decades is actually very small. It is only this year that the federal budget allocated for the information superhighway plan is actually only US$650 million.

Most of the investment is still to be invested by private capital under the leadership of the federal information industry policy.

Four hundred billion US dollars in 20 years seems to be very large, but as long as it is profitable, the capital poured into this industry is actually much more than that.

In Simon's memory, during the most turbulent period of the Internet bubble two thousand years ago, more than 70 billion US dollars was invested in new technology in a year, which is not even the larger capital of the peripheral speculation technology stocks.

This time, AOL has already demonstrated in advance that the ISP industry is promising. Even without the guidance of the federal government, the major telecommunications giants will increase their investment in new technologies.

At today's meeting, Simon is most concerned about the tax incentives program launched by the White House for new technology fields.

Opening the memo in his hand, Simon asked another thing: "How are the negotiations in New York?"

Alison shook his head: "There is no new news for the time being."

There is no new news, there is no progress.

Simon was not in a hurry.

If Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley insist on refusing to compromise, he is not without other options. After all, this transaction is a typical seller's market.

The big deal, all 10% of the shares are sold to one of them.

Or choose another investment bank.

These days, as Eaglet has become more and more dazzling, there are actually more troubles.

In a recent report, Yigrete has suffered 11 litigation disputes in copyright, patent, and monopoly.

The largest of these came from a comprehensive lawsuit under the Hearst Group, claiming US$100 million for the misappropriation of a large number of news, pictures and other content under the Hearst Group.

Traditional media has obviously felt the threat of Internet media again.

Regarding this infringement lawsuit, in fact, it is basically the content uploaded by users themselves, and there are even obvious traces of man-made manipulation in it.

However, Eaglet has a plan for this situation.

Although the Internet Safe Harbor Act is still in lobbying, the Egreat Company’s user terms also have corresponding provisions. As long as the copyright owner confirms that the content is infringing, they can contact Egreat Company to delete it voluntarily.

However, the Hearst Group did not do this, but directly initiated a lawsuit after collecting a large number of "infringement" evidence.

At the same time, many newspapers of the Hearst Group are simultaneously making efforts to require the federal government to strengthen copyright protection in the Internet field while developing the information industry.

Back then, the Hearst Group once provoked the Spanish-American War on its own, which shows the influence of this media giant on federal public opinion.

Moreover, this lawsuit is actually a counterattack by traditional media against new Internet media, trying to restrict the development of Internet media that has become more turbulent.

However, this time, neither Eagle nor the federal government could let Hearst Group lead the way.

After responding to the lawsuit, while using the media resources of the entire Westeros system to fight back, Yigrete quickly provided a large amount of evidence of its own proactive handling of infringing content, which proves that Yigrete attaches great importance to copyright protection. , It’s just that the content of the Internet platform is too large to actively censor all content. If this is necessary, the Internet industry cannot continue to develop.

Eaglet’s lawyer team also pointed out that after Hearst Group confirmed the content infringement, it did not contact Eaglet for proactive handling, but directly launched "extortion."

After several battles between the two sides, even if it controlled a large number of media platforms, the Hearst Group was clearly at a disadvantage.

Moreover, at the government level, the White House did not stand by the Hearst Group this time.

Bill Clinton is about to use the Internet industry to revive the U.S. economy with ambitions. Even if the Hearst Group belongs to the Democratic camp and is related to its own political future, this time of course he will not allow the Hearst Group to jump out of the mess.