Unlike sunny Los Angeles and drizzly Seattle, New York is still in the coldest time of the year.
Winter days are short.
Simon arrived on the East Coast and rushed from JFK Airport to his apartment on Fifth Avenue. It was already dark.
Janet is not the only one in the apartment, Sofia Fesi arrived yesterday from Europe.
Simon continues to work, but Janet and many people around her are busy preparing for the wedding in early March.
The wedding has been confirmed to be held in Melbourne, the guest list has been initially finalized, and the Johnston family has specially prepared several charter flights for this purpose.
Sophia came to New York this time for the wedding dress. The Gucci design team began to design the wedding dress after Simon and Janet's wedding date was confirmed. The housekeeper came here specially to discuss some production details with Janet in person.
Being dragged by Janet to discuss wedding dress styles until the early hours of the morning last night, Simon still woke up very early the next day.
I fumbled for my watch and looked at it. It was still 6:50 in the morning on the east coast.
The woman in his arms noticed Simon's movements and clung to him tighter. In her sleep, she opened her small mouth and bit the man's shoulder, and then there was no movement again.
Feeling Janet's obsession, Simon gave up the idea of getting up and closed his eyes again.
Winter is indeed a great season for laziness.
When I woke up again, it was almost nine o'clock in the morning, and Janet was no longer around.
After Simon got dressed and washed, he opened the bedroom curtains, and the desolate Central Park was filled with the soft sunshine unique to this season. It was pale and feeble, and seemed to be reluctant to do so.
At least it was a sunny day.
When they came downstairs, Janet and Sophia had just prepared breakfast. When they saw Simon, Janet came over and kissed the man, and said, "I was about to tell you to wake up."
Simon hugged the woman and said good morning, said hello to Sophia, and came to sit down at the dining table.
Sofia brought breakfast and put a few today's newspapers in Simon's hands before sitting down. During the meal, she talked about some things about Gucci. The fashion week in February was coming soon. I have no time to spare, I have to return to Europe tomorrow.
After breakfast, Sofia rushed to the headquarters of Gucci's US branch. Neither Simon nor Janet had any work scheduled today, and they were just as bored as cats in winter, enjoying their world together in the apartment.
"... I have already made preparations. On that day, there will be a maze of flower walls outside our wedding venue in Yarra Valley Park. All kinds of flowers will definitely be very beautiful... "
In a living room on the second floor of the duplex apartment, Janet was holding a thick folder filled with various wedding planning materials and talking to Simon.
Looking at the woman's blushing face when she talked about this, Simon smiled and said: "Don't women all have premarital phobia? You don't seem to have any reaction at all."
Janet leaned against Simon affectionately and said: "Only women who doubt whether they have met the right man will have premarital phobia, and I don't have it."
Hearing this, Simon kissed Janet's smooth face. He still felt a little unfinished, and stretched out his arms to hug the woman.
Janet naturally began to respond.
The two were entangled for a moment, and soon turned into a scene not suitable for children.
They were tired of staying in the apartment all day, and Sofia didn't come back to disturb them at night. The next day was Monday, and they had to continue working.
On Saturday morning, Sheila Ward told Simon that Saddam’s speech at the meeting of the Arab Cooperation Council was unclear. However, the Cersei Capital team in New York based this news and some recent reports from European and American countries. Trends, began to make arrangements in the oil futures market in advance.
As the hedge fund industry has become increasingly prosperous in the past two years, Cersei Capital is not the only one eyeing the oil futures market.
However, in response to Saddam's statement, many hedge funds believe that international oil prices should start to rise in the next period, but Cersei Capital is betting on a fall in oil prices.
In Simon's memory, because Saddam Hussein has expressed a "non-cooperation" stance with the West since last year, and because the Bush family, a family with close ties to various oil giants, is in power in the United States, European and American oil groups finally decided to take action against Iraq. Take action.
The first step is not war, but targeting Iraq's domestic economy, which has become increasingly vulnerable after the decade-long Iran-Iraq war.
Iraq's economy is deeply dependent on oil. The best way to hit the country's economy is to push international oil prices down.
Therefore, countries such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, which have close ties with European and American oil groups, will significantly increase production in the next few months to lower international oil prices. This is also the most direct reason for Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
In the original time and space, international crude oil prices plummeted from US$19 in early 1990 to US$13 in just a few months before the Kuwait War, a drop of more than 30%.
After the outbreak of the Kuwait War, international crude oil prices jumped directly from the bottom of 13 US dollars to a high of 40 US dollars, an increase of more than 200%.
Then, the Gulf War broke out. When most crude oil speculators thought that international crude oil prices would continue to rise, the war ended quickly at a devastating speed. The international oil price soon fell back to less than 20 US dollars. Even the European and American countries that initiated the war did not expect such an outcome.
For more than half a year, international crude oil prices have continued to rise and fall, causing countless investors engaged in crude oil futures trading to either become rich overnight or go bankrupt.
It can be said that if Simon did not have the prophetic advantage of being a reborn person, even if Simon could roughly predict the next situation, he would not dare to place too heavy a bet in such turmoil.
Otherwise, it may only take one wrong judgment, and the original huge profits may turn into losses.
Just like the Quantum Fund in the original time and space, Soros was invincible in the Asian market, but because he misjudged Russia's economic situation, he suffered a one-time loss of more than 3 billion US dollars in the second year.
Moreover, the reason why Cersei Capital accepted funds from North America to join this time is to minimize the occurrence of artificial variables, and at the same time, it can also obtain some useful inside information through this exchange of interests.
Simon is in New York until Wednesday.
For two consecutive nights, he attended the fundraising reception hosted by Cersei Capital. The funds from Cersei Fund Management Company were already in place. These two receptions were mainly for Apollo Management Company headed by Leon Black and Lawrence Fink. of Blackrock Asset Management.
Apollo Management has set its sights on the bond assets of Columbia Savings and Credit Bank, which is being auctioned and liquidated after being taken over by the federal government. The first tranche plans to raise US$1 billion. US$1 billion in funds is actually not enough. Therefore, in the next Vulture investment operation, Apollo Management’s investment team will also cooperate with other financial giants on Wall Street.
In doing so, on the one hand, it can reduce risks, on the other hand, it can also eliminate Wall Street's hostility towards Cersei Capital, and at the same time build Cersei Capital's relationship network on Wall Street.
Most financial giants on Wall Street are in a state of competition and cooperation with each other.
The main reason why the once-mighty Drexel Securities Company went bankrupt in just a few months after falling into crisis was that Drexel Securities had no friends on Wall Street.
In the past ten years, more than US$80 billion in junk bond issuance has been issued. Drexel Securities has been going it alone, refusing to give up any of its generous issuance and underwriting fees to other companies. So much so that when Drexel Securities fell into crisis in the second half of last year, it asked its Wall Street peers Asked for help, but no one was willing to lend a helping hand.
Compared to Apollo Management’s first $1 billion fundraising plan, Cersei Capital plans to raise another $3 billion in funding for Black Rock Asset Management, which is equivalent to Black Rock’s existing funding.
The reason for this difference is mainly due to the risk difference in the business conducted by the two companies.
Apollo Management is responsible for operations such as leveraged buyouts, equity investments, and vulture investments, and you may suffer heavy losses if you are not careful. In comparison, Black Rock Asset Management's investment business in stocks, bonds and fixed income products carries very low risks. Of course, the returns are also very low, which requires scale to win.
In the midst of my busy schedule, the time has come to the last day of January.
Heading back to Los Angeles in the afternoon, Simon spent the morning at the New York branch of Daenerys Entertainment in Greenwich.
The spring TV season has quietly begun. Although the annual TV program promotion season is in May, from the beginning of the year, various TV program production companies have begun to look for projects for the new year.
Daenerys Television, headed by Robert Egger, produced a total of 10 TV shows last year, including 4 reality shows originally led by Simon, 3 TV series taken over by New World Entertainment, and 3 new series launched last year.
At present, the main income of Daenerys TV Company is still four reality shows such as "Who Will Be a Millionaire". Of the three new dramas last year, the TV network has only renewed one and the other three old dramas. After last year's autumn release, one film was canceled again due to low ratings.
Moreover, among the four reality shows, "The Housewives of Beverly Hills" broadcast on the CBS platform also encountered some problems.
Phenomenal reality shows have never been so easy to appear. In Simon's memory, there were only a few reality shows that could reach the level of familiarity, whether in the 1990s or after the new century. "Who Will Be a Millionaire" and "Survivor" all belong to this category, and "Big Brother" is slightly less popular, but there has been no more popular project than these three reality shows in the past two years.
However, "The Housewives of Beverly Hills", which was originally a basic cable channel, did not have such good luck.
Adding in the public channel sequence, compared to "Who Will Be a Millionaire", "Survivor" and "Big Brother", the ratings data of "The House of Beverly Hills" is already at the bottom.
At the beginning, CBS also launched two reality shows at the same time. Although the ratings data were lower, they were barely sustainable. This made CBS less dependent on "The House of Beverly Hills".
Therefore, before the second season of "The House of Beverly Hills" has been completed, CBS is once again trying to lower the renewal price for the third season of this reality show.
In the New York branch building, Simon listened to Robert Iger's introduction to the situation in the conference room. He knocked on the table and considered for a moment, then said: "In this case, let's cancel the cooperation with CBS."
Robert Egger was a little surprised: "Simon, even if the quotation is reduced by another 20%, we will still be profitable, and there is no need to cancel."
Simon glanced at the other TV department executives in the conference room, waved everyone out, and then said to Iger: "Bob, for "The Beverly Wives", I actually planned to make it into a complete "Beverly Housewives" series. of."
Robert Iger nodded and said: "I know, you have mentioned it before. However, Simon, this is not realistic. It is impossible for the four major TV networks to give us too much time to broadcast a whole series of reality shows."
"So, we needed to find a separate platform for this series."
Robert Egger also knew that Cersei Capital had hoarded a large amount of funds overseas, and he tried: "Simon, are you planning to acquire a TV network?"
"Now is not the time," Simon shook his head and said, "Bob, there are some things I can't tell you yet, but if everything goes well, we will have our own TV network in the second half of the year. Although it is not yet the level of the four major The scale of the public television network is more than enough to accommodate the Housewives series. It just so happens that using the Housewives series, we can also build our own TV network into a branded women's TV station."
Having been in the television industry for a long time, Iger heard what Simon said and quickly understood what was going on.
After combing through the information on a series of media groups in the industry in his memory, Iger tentatively asked: "USA?"
USA, like the CW, AMC and MTV television networks many years later, is a national basic cable television network in the United States.
Unlike public television networks, basic cable stations are cable TV stations, but different from paid cable stations. Basic cable stations do not charge users directly, but receive revenue sharing from cable TV operators, as well as some advertising revenue. .
Today, USA TV is still jointly owned by Paramount Communications and MCA, each holding 50% of the shares.
Although the light of USA after the new century has been completely overshadowed by television networks such as CW, AMC and MTV, compared to AMC with phenomenally popular dramas such as "The Walking Dead" or the CW with DC superhero dramas, the TV programs produced by USA are lackluster. , but in this era, due to the joint support of the two giants Paramount Communications and MCA, USA is the most popular and largest among the newly emerging basic cable stations.
Seeing that Egger had guessed it, Simon did not deny it. He nodded with a smile and warned: "Remember to keep this matter secret."
"certainly."
Egg agreed and wisely did not ask any more questions, but he couldn't help but wonder whether Simon's next goal would be MCA or Paramount Communications.
MCA seems easier.
At Paramount Communications, Martin Davis waited until the death of the previous head of the company to take control of the company, and he was unwilling to let go easily.
Because of the original contract, CBS had no choice but to give up the show if they wanted to take it back. The two discussed the matter for a while. Simon handed a folder to Iger and said, "I took the time to look at the company. I have selected two TV series project materials that I am looking for, so be sure to get them. For the rest, you can decide based on the situation."
Egger took the folder handed over by Simon and opened it. The first thing that appeared in front of him was information about a sitcom with the name "Seinfeld" printed on the cover.
"Seinfeld" is a sitcom that was as popular as "Friends" in the 1990s. This series is not as popular overseas as "Friends", but it is very popular in North America. In the original time and space, "Seinfeld" even set a record of more than 70 million viewers when it was finally completed.
Simon had seen information about this project when he was in Los Angeles. Another purpose of coming to New York this time was to tell Iger to win this project.
As for the other one, it is Simon's habit of mixing in the sand casually. It doesn't matter whether it succeeds or fails, or it is better to fail.