When Simon arrived at Daenerys Studios in the morning, the first thing he paid attention to was not the four opening movies today, but Blockbuster.
After months of tug-of-war, this morning on the east coast of the United States, the federal Department of Justice finally officially approved Daenerys Entertainment’s full acquisition of Blockbuster, announcing that Daenerys has once again completed the complete layout of another important business.
Continuous news speculation, deliberate suppression on the part of the Westeros system, and the fact that the Republican Party gave up taking action on this matter. When the news was announced, except for the unavoidable tangled emotions in the industry, there was basically no splash.
The next step is to sign the merger agreement.
Others, because they are already the largest shareholder controlling the company in advance, the subsequent tedious details in similar mergers and acquisitions can be omitted.
Of course that doesn’t mean doing nothing.
Simon held a small meeting with Nancy Brill, who is responsible for this part of the business, in the morning, mainly discussing Blockbuster's subsequent development strategy. The first is to go further online and accelerate the business layout of DVD mail rental. Next, continue to optimize Blockbuster’s online and offline management systems, always pursuing higher efficiency and lower costs.
In Simon's view, the reason why Blockbuster declined rapidly in the late 1990s was not its unwillingness to keep pace with the times and develop its online business. The key was Blockbuster's bloatedness and inefficiency in all aspects from management to service. , the result is that as the world's largest video rental chain, not only did it not provide users with better services and cheaper prices because of its scale effect, but the opposite, and the high prices did not bring enough benefits to Blockbuster. Instead of losing profits, they fell into continuous losses, and even had to rely on overdue fines to maintain cash flow.
It is unreasonable for such a company not to decline.
When Simon cut off Blockbuster from Paramount, he made it clear from the beginning that as a retail chain enterprise, Blockbuster's target should be Wal-Mart.
The key to why Wal-Mart can still maintain its position as the world's largest supermarket chain in an era of booming e-commerce twenty years later is its ultimate pursuit of efficiency, cost, and service.
Similarly, for Blockbuster, although Simon prefers online, he has not relaxed his focus on physical stores at all.
Because of Simon's initial strategy, coupled with the efficient execution team led by Nancy, Blockbuster's current brick-and-mortar business and online rentals not only win the favor of users with high-quality services and low prices, but also maintain profits that significantly exceed those of its peers. level.
Therefore, according to current trends, Blockbuster's physical business will not be a problem for another ten years.
On the other hand, just as Walmart and Amazon could coexist well in the past, Simon's goal is to achieve long-term rapid growth in online business based on the continued existence of Blockbuster's physical business.
This goal may seem contradictory, but it’s actually quite simple.
Since other competitors and film companies were willing to let it go, the original expansion plan naturally stopped. However, what Blockbuster will do next is actually cannibalizing. Offline stores will continue to encroach on the physical business that will inevitably shrink with the development of online leasing. In the end, it is likely that only Blockbuster will be left, while the online business will continue to Growth erodes the leasing market share of other entities.
Perhaps ten years from now, when physical leasing has completely lost its competitiveness and Blockbuster's own online has begun to encroach on its offline, it will be time to end physical leasing and shift from online leasing to streaming media.
That is another industrial change.
Moreover, the measure of all this is actually very simple, profit.
For business activities, profit is fundamental, and a business that does not make money will not last long. If efficiency is achieved to the extreme, physical stores still no longer make money, and it’s time to give up. Similarly, when online mail rentals no longer make money, it’s time to completely turn to streaming media.
In addition to the Blockbuster incident, there is another incident from Asia that caught Simon's attention today.
South Korean won appreciates.
When Simon was in Seoul, he finalized the strategy with Chen Qing on a video call. They acted quickly there. In the past week, several Wall Street financial giants such as Cersei, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs launched a series of statements such as "South Korea's economic recovery is strong" and "South Korea's progress." Analytical reports on export recovery exceeding expectations' and 'Korean won exchange rate deviating from South Korea's economic fundamentals'.
After this preparation, during the day today in Asia, several teams including Cersei Capital and Quantum Fund joined forces to start operations in the three major Korean stock, bond and foreign exchange markets at the same time, using more than 5 billion US dollars in funds at one time, resulting in South Korea's financial market rose sharply across the board, and even subsequently led to the rise of the entire Asian financial market.
As of the close of the afternoon local time, the exchange rate of the South Korean won against the U.S. dollar, which Simon is most concerned about, has soared from 1,634 to 1 before today's opening to 1,576 to 1. After nearly a year, it has returned to the 1,500 range, with a single-day increase of 3.6%. The foreign exchange market is different from the stock market. Under normal circumstances, the currency's single-day rise and fall is one thousandth or even one ten thousandth. The Korean won's single-day rise exceeded 1%, or even as high as 3.6%, which is obviously abnormal.
Therefore, not only was South Korea panicked for a while, Simon had a video call with Chen Qing who was in Hong Kong in the afternoon, and a certain girl also had to take the initiative to admit her mistake.
This operation was a bit excessive.
Moreover, it is not actually a strategic mistake here. The team over there just didn't expect that, probably because of the constant blows in the past few days, today's wave of operations attracted much more follow-up capital than expected.
After all, Simon's request is to promote the Korean won's 20% increase in three months, not just a few days.
According to today's single-day increase of 3.6%, if repeated for five trading days, the Korean won's appreciation will reach 20% in one week.
Regardless, it was a mistake.
Chen Qing also judged that in addition to the briefings a few days ago, there may be reasons for the news to be leaked in advance. After all, there are too many eyes staring at any operation in the Westeros system.
Chen Qing also assured Simon that he would re-plan the weekend to avoid what happened today happening again as much as possible.
Moreover, speaking of it, now that the signal has been sent out, the market may take the initiative to push the Korean won upward without much operation of the Westeros system.
This saves trouble.
In the end, Simon just reminded Chen Qing not to run away, and it would definitely not work if it was too high.
After a day's work, Simon flew to Hacienda San Lucas in Baja California Sur, Mexico, with Nancy Brill in the evening. A small female executive always yells that someone who does something to her in bed is murder, but now that they are in a relationship, she is very proactive when she wants something. After the meeting about Blockbuster in the morning, she took the initiative to bring it up, but she still inevitably complains and accuses someone of not being enough. Thoughtful.
Simon counterattacked like a woman as usual, but of course he agreed.
For this reason, the entertainment originally planned for Friday night was temporarily changed.
The thing is about China. Chen Qing told Simon in an email a few days ago that starting from November 2, "Legend of Sword and Fairy" was piloted on the regional terrestrial wireless station Beijing Life Channel, and the ratings have been soaring. It only took a week. At that time, the ratings of "Sword of Fairy" reached 40% in the Beijing area. It is expected that after the broadcast is completed, the highest ratings are expected to reach the level of 60 to 70%, recreating the grand occasion of last year's "Huan Zhuge Ge".
Simon had fully expected this.
Then, on a whim, in reply to the letter, Chen Qing asked Chen Qing to pack up and fly over a certain little maid who was obviously going to become famous with "Sword of Immortal" for weekend entertainment.
Thinking that one was not enough, I simply asked for the complete Huanzhu trio.
Now, of course, the plans had to change now that the smaller female executives were complaining that Simon wasn't considerate enough.