Hollywood Hunter

The issue of charity is actually a bit sensitive for Simon. Amy Pascal just made fun of a few words and did not continue, but said: "I just got news this morning, Vivendi has decided to promote Sandy Litwater and Bill Michalnick has served as Disney’s CEO and President, and he will announce his fate publicly next week, and Frank Wells will retire.”

Simon has also received the news and nodded, "I know."

After completing the acquisition of Disney at the end of last year, the French Vivendi Group has been looking for suitable professional managers for this company. However, some of the candidates that Vivendi liked have declined one after another, including Michael Ovitz, President of C, Frank Marshall and Katherine Kennedy, the former right-hand man of Spielberg, and Hollywood gold medal producer Joe ·Silver and even several executives of Daenerys Entertainment Group.

The circle probably realized something, coupled with Vivendi's conservativeness in decentralization, these external candidates have successively expressed their rejection.

In desperation, Vivendi had to promote executives from within Disney.

Sandy Littlewater is Disney’s vice president and head of the legal department, and Bill Michalnick is the president of Disney’s home entertainment division responsible for the video and television distribution business.

The two were promoted to Disney CEO and President respectively, which is equivalent to two consecutive promotions.

However, judging from their actual powers, the two are actually only equivalent to an upgrade.

According to information obtained by Simon, after Sandy Littlewat was promoted to CEO, he was actually in charge of the business of former president Frank Wells, mainly the administrative affairs of corporate personnel and legal affairs. Bill Michalnick, as the president, will directly manage the production business once led by Jeffrey Katzenberg.

The core corporate strategic planning and financial power, which should belong to the CEO, are directly controlled by the Vivendi headquarters.

This is not actually the result that Vivendi's board of directors hopes to see.

However, there are not so many good things in this world for both reluctance to delegate power and want a sufficiently good professional manager.

I have discussed more than once in private how to deal with Disney after being acquired by the Vivendi Group. Amy just mentioned this to Simon at this time. Seeing that her boss already knows about it, she no longer speaks, and said: "Ace Na is trying to invest in the Internet field, partnering with Ovitz, and has finalized a project. I ate with Nancy at Morton's restaurant last night. I happened to meet them and chatted with them. An interesting idea. "

Simon was also a little surprised, and asked, "Eisner is cured?"

Amy nodded: "There is no major problem now, but the original quadruple bypass surgery is very risky, and it will be fine if you can survive.

Michael Eisner had a heart attack when he heard that Daenerys Entertainment was going to establish Universal Studios in Europe. He was almost unable to save it at the time. Simon had learned about this earlier.

Disney President Frank Wells, who was supposed to have died last year in a skiing accident, escaped because of the influence of Simon this big butterfly. If Eisner died unexpectedly because of the news he released, Simon would inevitably feel a little guilty. The legitimate business competition has not reached the level of life-threatening, let alone the rise of Hollywood.

Simon nodded slightly, skillfully picked up some Chinese fried noodles on the plate with chopsticks, and asked with a smile: "What project did Eisner vote for?"

Amy took a sip of the juice and said, "Probably, it should be regarded as a workplace social networking site. This is the idea that Ovitz came up with. As you know, Ovitz is very good at managing contacts. The network business model in China has moved to the Internet. Unlike those recruitment sites that can only deliver resumes, this workplace social networking site allows users to directly establish their contacts in certain circles and display their resumes more intuitively. Moreover, after forming a circle, you can also obtain more precise recruitment or application goals through mutual recommendation, and social network members can also recommend each other."

Simon, who was across from the table, became more familiar with it, and quickly understood.

This is the LinkedIn in my memory.

In the past, Terry Semel left as the CEO of Yahoo Hollywood because of the failure to fight for power within Time Warner. This time, Semel, because of Daenerys Entertainment’s support, has more advantages in Time Warner Group. It has become more and more obvious that he is likely to be the next chairman of the board.

Unexpectedly, Michael Eisner, who left Disney ten years earlier, turned to Silicon Valley.

After Amy finished speaking, when Simon was silent, he asked, "Simon, what do you think?"

Simon came back to his senses and nodded with a smile: "A very good idea, the key is whether they can find a suitable business model."

The former LinkedIn was acquired by Microsoft with a huge sum of more than US$26 billion in 2016, which illustrates the feasibility of this workplace social platform concept. The key is to see whether Eisner and Ovitz can find a way to make this A business plan for the sustainable development of the website.

After all, ideas are never valuable.

Just like the previous LinkedIn, Simon does not believe that Silicon Valley will only have one workplace social networking site, but LinkedIn will eventually stand out.

Across the table, Amy paused when he heard Simon say this, and said, "So, Simon, are you interested in this project?"

Simon raised his head to look at Amy, seeming to understand something, and smiled: "Eisner asked you to ask?"

Amy shook her head and said, "No, but I think since they told me so in detail last night, they probably wanted to let you know. Perhaps, if you are willing to invest, it would be better."

Simon said: "Eisner shouldn't be short of money, right?"

Amy shrugged: "You know, it's not just a question of money."

Simon thought a little, and understood.

First of all, Amy Pascal, Michael Eisner, Michael Ovitz, they are all Jewish.

This can be regarded as a typical mutual help between Jews without conflict of interest.

Secondly, as Amy said, if it weren't for Simon's intention to know, Eisner would not talk about their project in such detail at a dinner that happened by chance. This was obviously to attract Simon's attention.

As for the question of money.

Of course, Eisner and Ovitz are not short of money, and it will be easy to spend millions of dollars in start-up capital. However, the two obviously still maintain a certain habitual thinking in Hollywood.

The first rule of Hollywood movie investment: Never spend your own money.

The same is true for Silicon Valley.

Everyone only sees the success of Yahoo, Google, and Amazon. But they don’t know that behind these winners, more than 90% of the projects ended up in vain, and the number of investors with hundreds of millions of dollars of funds did not even sound. Hear.

Moreover, if Simon is willing to invest in Eisner, it will not only ease some of the frictions between the two parties in the past, but this project will also be supported by the Westeros system.

This is crucial.

Now in Silicon Valley, there are more than one photo-sharing websites. Why is Instagram, which has only been established for half a year, is so amazing? Is this website's business model so good?

the answer is negative.

At least most of them are negative.

The key is that the entire Westeros system supports Instagram in terms of hardware, software, and network traffic.

Speaking of which, Simon has always admired the latter for Eisner and Ovitz.

After the rise of the Westeros system, Simon occasionally considered recruiting Ovitz to join, because the huge Westeros system requires very large interpersonal relationships that need to be reconciled and maintained. In this regard, Ovitz happens to be an expert level.

However, thoughts are only thoughts after all, and there are many obstacles in putting them into action.

Such as loyalty.

Because it is not Amy Pascal's direct lineage that has risen together from scratch, it lacks the recognition and loyalty formed by long-term running-in, and it seems very reckless to invite the other party to maintain a very sensitive system relationship.

In any case, Simon admired Ovitz very much.

As for Eisner, there was no friction between the two sides before. It was just because of some information in the memory that Simon did not have much favor with Eisner.

Now, many things have changed, and Simon has never been a caregiver. He considered for a moment and said, "In this case, you can help me ask. If you have time on the weekend, you can have coffee and chat together."

Amy nodded to take note.

Simon saw that Amy was rushing to the point, and he was interested again, and said, "This way, for their website, I can give a name first, LinkedIn," he said while writing the word on the dining table. With some joking tone: "The most troublesome thing in Silicon Valley now is to name it, because for so many years, the slightly normal words have been registered by various companies. I guess this is definitely not."

Amy noticed Simon's gesture just now.

LinkedIn, obviously a combination of the two words of LinkedIn, literally translates to ‘connect’, which fits the intention of a workplace social networking site.

Knowing that her boss's naming habit had happened again, Amy smiled and promised: "I will tell them."

After talking like this, the lunch time was over, and the two returned to their offices.

Work in the afternoon is something other than Daenerys Entertainment.

Simon returned to the office, and the female assistant reminded Celia Miller, who had returned to New York, that he was online, and the documents to be read in the afternoon were already listed on the desk.

The first is several important cooperation results negotiated with Ukraine during this period.

With regard to the Rivne region nuclear power plant, under the tie of the Westeros system, the First Boston team finally finalized a bond issuance contract of up to $1 billion with the Ukrainian nuclear power company for the Rivne region nuclear power plant unit 4 The construction of the nuclear power plant and the transformation of the power grid line between the nuclear power plant and the city of Rivni.

In Ukraine now, no investor dared to lend one billion US dollars to the other party.

Therefore, in addition to the credit guarantee of the Westeros system, the Ukrainian Nuclear Power Company also carried out an actual pledge operation. The target is the 50% equity of the Rivne Nuclear Power Plant. Once the Uzbek Nuclear Power fails to repay the principal and interest of the bond on time, the first Boston Will have the right to auction 50% of Urumqi Nuclear Power’s equity to raise funds to repay investors.

Not only that, this time the 10-year bond of $1 billion has an annual interest rate of 12%, far exceeding the industry average.

You must know that the current 10-year Treasury bond interest rate in the United States is only 2.8%, and the 10-year bond interest rate of high-quality corporates is generally only about 5%.

Although Ukraine's economy is not good, in fact, the repayment ability of Ukrainian nuclear power is still very guaranteed. While the power generation of other traditional power plants in Ukraine has plummeted, only Uzbekistan Nuclear Power maintains a stable annual output of 50 billion kWh, with annual revenue equivalent to about 3 billion US dollars.

Such a monopolistic state-owned enterprise with stable income, as long as the repayment can be guaranteed, even if it offers a 5% annual interest, it will not be taken over.

The reason why there is such a stupid bond financing plan in Simon’s view is that on the one hand, Ukraine obviously lacks experience in dealing with national financial giants, and instinctively puts itself in a weak position lacking confidence. They are international financial giants, of course. What you say is what you say.

On the other hand, probably too, enough money.

In previous memories, Simon would often hear similar incidents.

Now that such a contract is finalized, it is nothing more than cutting off a piece of funds that can be handed over to the state finances for the national economy and the people's livelihood for Uzbekistan's nuclear power every year.

Moreover, according to the initial estimate, this $1 billion is actually unnecessary, and $700 million is sufficient.

The current increase of 300 million US dollars is mainly used to purchase the power generation equipment of Westinghouse Electric in the United States. This is because the price of Westinghouse equipment is twice as high as compared to local production in Ukraine.

Simon also knows that this is actually bargaining, and the bargaining range is quite large.

However, obviously, if the money is enough, no one wants to bargain. Anyway, it's all state money.

Not only that, high-priced imported equipment from the United States can also be used for publicity. Of course, the equipment in the United States is safer. You can sleep at ease, and there will never be a second Chernobyl accident.

This is not Simon’s conjecture, but the trend of public opinion released by local Ukrainian newspapers.

good results.

In Ukraine now, because of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the national economy, the national sentiment is basically still in the mindset that the United States is good at everything and its own country is useless, and it is bound to be difficult to get rid of for many years to come.

Of course these have nothing to do with Simon.

During the telephone discussion, Simon only asked Celia to set up a special financial supervision team to ensure that the $1 billion bond financing was spent where it should be. After all, whether it is the construction of Unit 4 of the Rivne Nuclear Power Plant or the transformation of the power grid between the nuclear power plant and Rivni, it will ultimately be used in the layout of the Westeros system in Rivne Oblast.

Although the Westeros system actually paid nothing during this bond financing process, it still has the power to supervise because it relies on its own reputation for matching.

Even if it is inevitable that all aspects have their own small calculations, in the end, they will definitely hope that the money will be spent as much as possible.

In addition to the nuclear power plant, there is also the issue of Nokia's establishment of a mobile phone production plant in Livni.

After negotiations, Nokia successfully obtained a series of preferential policies from the Ukrainian government, mainly a 10-year tax incentive agreement and 150 hectares of free land in the northern part of Rivni city for the construction of factories.