After returning from Tasmania, Jennifer spent another three days in Melbourne before returning to Los Angeles.
The entire Westeros system only counts companies directly held by the Westeros Corporation, including the core four 'women', as well as a large number of listed or unlisted companies such as Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, AOL, Nokia, etc. , the number has reached 36, and it is still increasing. The number of other second- and third-level subsidiaries is even larger.
Although Simon delegates power as much as possible, due to their large number, the affairs that these companies produce every day and require him to personally handle are still very heavy and complicated.
The female assistant's status in Simon's business empire is now equivalent to his eyes. She is in charge of an assistant office with six other assistants. She constantly screens and summarizes the information of all enterprises in the entire Westeros system and transfers it to Simon for processing.
Simon continues to stay in Melbourne to follow up on the filming of "The Dark Knight" and remotely control the operation of the entire Westeros system.
Enterprises always appear to be more energetic in the early stages of development, and this is especially true for the Westeros system, which has been expanding rapidly in recent years.
Florence.
The continued turmoil in Europe has not affected Italy. However, this country located on the peninsula has always been difficult to have a large voice in Europe, whether economically or politically.
Sofia Fei also pays little attention to politics and has recently been negotiating with the Gucci family.
The last male member of Gucci's second generation, 85-year-old Aldo Gucci, died last month, which was nothing to worry about.
Melisandre Company has achieved absolute control over Gucci. No matter what, it is difficult for the Gucci family to have much influence on this luxury brand.
However, the internal disputes within the Gucci family are also well known to many people. Aldo Gucci did not arrange his posthumous affairs. He held on to the 12% of Gucci shares in his name until the last second of his life, and then dumped them to his children.
Without a family trust arranged in advance, several of Aldo Gucci’s children would face unavoidable inheritance tax issues.
A more serious problem is that none of Aldo Gucci's children can come up with enough cash to pay inheritance taxes. Although Gucci's recovery is very rapid, Sophia has spent all the company's excess funds on business expansion. In recent years They don't plan to pay any dividends to shareholders.
As a result, the Gucci family had to choose to sell this 12% stake.
Melisandre, who has the support of the Westeros system behind the scenes, is naturally the most suitable target to take over. Sofia is also interested in taking over this stake. Adding this 12% stake, Melisandre's shareholding ratio in Gucci is Can reach 75%.
However, compared with the initial total expenditure of US$170 million for Simon's acquisition of 63% of Gucci's shares, this time the Gucci family quoted a high price of US$150 million for 12% of its shares. Although the outside world's assessment of Gucci's market value is rising, it is impossible for Sofia to accept such an offer. After discussing with Simon, Melisandre's offer is capped at US$100 million. Therefore, Sofia has been bargaining with the Gucci family.
Because they only have 12% of the shares, they have no control over Gucci. The price is still so high. Apart from Melisandre, the Gucci family cannot find a second successor in a short time.
Helsinki.
After Nokia's mobile communications department was owned by Westeros, without the burden of other assets, and with another US$50 million in funding, Jorma Ollila quickly started the research and development of mobile phones and base station equipment related to GSM technology.
The direct border with the Soviet Union and the turmoil in Europe this year have made the whole of Finland a little trembling, but life still has to go by.
Just in the first half of the year, Finland has begun building Europe's or the world's first GSM pilot network. Although it is led by Germany's Siemens Group, Nokia is also participating in it.
However, it will take at least another year for GSM to be officially commercialized.
Nokia's mobile communications department cannot completely throw away its many years of experience. In the first half of the year, it continued to launch two analog signal mobile phones, and the sales were pretty good.
New York.
While Simon and his female assistant were spending time together in a cabin in Tasmania, James Raybould officially signed a shareholding agreement with Qualcomm, a wireless communications technology company headquartered in San Diego.
In the past two years, Qualcomm has initially completed the patent layout of CMDA technology, and has been recognized by AT-T, Bell Pacific, Motorola and other companies. It has also established cooperative relationships with Korean telecommunications companies and continues to obtain funds from all parties to invest in CDMA commercial technology. research and development.
However, after several consecutive capital injections from companies such as AT-T were quickly exhausted, Qualcomm has recently faced a shortage of funds.
If Westeros Company is not accepted as a shareholder, Qualcomm will have less than US$200,000 in funds on its books, and even its employees’ wages for August may not be paid smoothly.
The strength shown by Westeros in seizing control of AOL and Cisco made Qualcomm's management quite wary. However, it was difficult for Qualcomm to find a big fund that could immediately spend a large amount of money in a short period of time. host.
After some bargaining, Westeros obtained 4 million common shares of Qualcomm at a cost of US$35 million, accounting for 20% of Qualcomm's total equity at this time.
However, Westeros did not receive a commitment to maintain its shareholding ratio in subsequent financing or IPO processes like other shareholding companies. After Qualcomm accepted Westeros' shareholding, it was not subject to restrictions. continue to promote the IPO work.
San Francisco.
With the further promotion of Yigrit Portal and World Wide Web technology, although July has not yet passed, the growth in the number of AOL users has exceeded that of June. It is expected that the number of World Wide Web access users this month will increase by 55,000 to 60,000 households.
In order to keep up with the pace of market expansion, both Igret and AOL can only be described as "funds are burning".
Igret is completely in a state of burning money. From browser software, server software, portal technologies to the underlying JavaScript language development, R&D investment is huge, but sustainable revenue is far away.
Simon originally hoped to subsidize the portal unit through software sales, but this goal is obviously unrealistic in the short term.
Carol Bartz, who is in charge of the software department, has a rather strong personality. Although she has begun to obtain revenue from the installation of browser software, she not only has no intention of subsidizing the portal department, but instead uses the US$20 million invested by Simon. Zhongqie took away US$10 million for the development of the software department itself.
On Jeff Bezos' side, the remaining $10 million, the maintenance of the portal team and the construction of two new data centers will probably only last until the end of August.
Fortunately, Jeff Bezos has begun to explore the advertising business and successfully obtained two advertising orders from IBM and Microsoft. The amounts were not large, totaling only 800,000 US dollars. He also refused Gates' offer to increase advertising. Investment in exchange for suggestions on priority development of browser software for Windows platforms.
This vision of not caring about temporary gains and losses made Simon very satisfied.
In order to allow users to get the latest features as soon as possible, IGrit's IE browser is updated almost every month.
For customers, if the browser software on one platform is often more up-to-date than another platform, it will naturally create a bias unconsciously.
However, although the Windows operating system has begun to rise, Apple and traditional Unix computers have still been the mainstream in recent years. Although Westeros is a major shareholder of Microsoft, in order to promote World Wide Web technology as quickly as possible and avoid allowing other competitors to take advantage of it, machine, IE browser cannot be biased towards Microsoft for the time being.
As for the competition and differences between Jeff Bezos and Carol Bartz, Simon didn’t get too involved.
Appropriate internal competition is also beneficial to enterprise development.
Moreover, it is not yet time for the software sector to subsidize portals. If that day comes, Simon will not condone Carol Butts' willfulness.
In addition, at the end of July, 100 Internet cafes opened by AOL officially opened for business.
Excellent publicity and marketing in the early stage, the leisure environment inside the Internet cafe is no less than that of a coffee shop, and the public's curiosity about the Internet attracted a large number of customers at once.
However, as initially estimated, these 100 Internet cafes are basically unprofitable.
At a charge of US$3 per hour, each Internet cafe has 20 computers, and the business hours are from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. Calculated, even if an Internet cafe operates at full capacity, the theoretical monthly income is only US$28,800. In reality, It would be good to have half the score.
As it happens, the approximate break-even point for each Internet cafe is $15,000.
If you want to make a profit, as originally expected, you can only rely on drinks and snacks or selling some peripherals.
Although these 100 Internet cafes have little hope of making a profit, AOL has no intention of giving up this business.
After all, Simon's fundamental purpose is to promote World Wide Web technology.
In the plan, after a period of exploration and operation, AOL plans to expand the Internet cafe industry through authorized franchises. Franchisees only need to pay a certain franchise fee to AOL to receive a full set of technical and solution support. They can also adopt relatively relatively simple methods. With a flexible business model, it is relatively easy to make a profit by appropriately increasing the number of computers, increasing the price of Internet access, or developing additional businesses.
Los Angeles.
Without Simon, Daenerys Entertainment is still as vibrant as a little beast in spring.
The financial data for the first half of 1990 has been compiled. Although the management has not released detailed data, both internal and external media have already gotten a rough idea.
In the first six months of this year, Daenerys Entertainment made a fortune just by the unexpected box office hit "Pretty Woman."
However, "Pretty Woman", a film that can support a movie company's full-year performance, brought Daenerys Entertainment more than $160 million in box office revenue in the first half of the year, but it was less than Daenerys Entertainment. Silk Entertainment’s pre-tax profits in the first two quarters were one-tenth of the total.
Just "Batman Begins", which was a box office hit at the end of last year, made Daenerys Entertainment a lot of money in the first half of the year in terms of both box office and peripherals.
In addition, since the end of 1988, Daenerys Entertainment has accumulated the "Scream" series, "Dead Poets Society", "Rain Man", "The Sixth Sense", "The Bodyguard", "One Flew Over the Child", etc. A large number of blockbuster films continued to bring large profits to Daenerys Entertainment in overseas theaters, video tape markets and television broadcast platforms in the first half of 1990.
Daenerys Television's series of hit reality shows and other television projects are also bringing steady revenue to the company.
Not only that, Nancy Brill’s Daenerys entertainment consumer products department, including games and music businesses, has made huge profits due to a series of projects produced by the company.
Among them, the fighting version of the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" video game released by Blizzard Studio in March, although it did not reach the sales level of last year's role-playing version of the game, the cumulative sales of game cartridges exceeded 1 million boxes in three months, and the total sales are expected to The amount will exceed 2 million boxes.
Because it has obtained a special quota from Nintendo, it can release five games at special discounts every year. In addition to the fighting version of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", Blizzard Studio will also launch a role-playing version of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" sequel in the second half of the year. Danielle EA, in which Silk Entertainment has a stake, will also provide three more games for the Nintendo console platform.
Taken together, in the first half of 1990 alone, Daenerys Entertainment's after-tax net profit reached US$573 million. With the success of summer films such as "The Last Days" and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," the full-year net profit figure will at least double.
After the financial report was released, Amy Pascal was even in a daze for a while.
She officially signed a contract in March 1987, and the contract ended in March 1991, for a total of four years.
Based on the company's performance in the first half of the year and her original compensation terms, she is likely to receive more than $100 million in cash and stock awards this year.
100 million US dollars.
If someone had told her a few years ago that she could become a billionaire, Amy would have thought they were talking nonsense.
Hollywood executives, except for the top Steve Ross, Lou Vassalman and other few people who have been in high positions for a long time and have built the company to a sufficient scale. For others, the salary is actually not high. Everyone is busy and just earns a hard-earned money.
Even Steve Ross received a total salary of only more than 36 million US dollars last year. However, he has been scolded by the media and shareholders as a sieve.
If you are really in Hollywood, you all know that the most profitable people in this industry are only a handful of top stars.
As for the senior management in the industry, although they seem to have great power, they are also subject to many constraints. Most of the time, they have to be angry with investors and do everything possible to accommodate celebrities. They are not as glamorous as the outside world imagines.
However, she, Amy Pascal, a woman, can actually earn $100 million a year in an industry where women are generally discriminated against and objectified.
In a daze, Amy even occasionally thought in a vain way, how should she spend such a large sum of money
While the Westeros system was expanding vigorously, time also passed silently through the last few days of July 1990.
In the last week of July, the situation in the Middle East, which has been extremely tense, has become increasingly troubled.
After asking Kuwait to forgive its debts and provide huge compensation under the pretext of Kuwait's "stealing" of Iraqi oil, to no avail, Iraq's most elite tank and armored divisions of the Republican Guard have been deployed on the Iraq-Kuwait border.
Not wanting Arab brothers to fight against each other, Egyptian President Mubarak took the initiative to visit Iraq to advocate for Kuwait, but he left after being frustrated.
Middle Eastern countries that also felt threatened held a large-scale joint military exercise with the US Persian Gulf Fleet on July 24 with great fanfare in an attempt to deter Saddam Hussein's regime. At the same time, international crude oil prices also surged rapidly in the last week of July.
In just one week, it has soared from a low of $13 to a high of nearly $20.
Cersei Capital liquidated all short contracts on Monday, July 23, but was deprived of a large amount of profits by the rising crude oil prices.
When crude oil prices soared in the last week of July, the long positions that originally suffered huge losses turned losses into profits in just a few days, followed by staggering profits.