Daenerys Entertainment can be said to be the biggest winner of this Oscar, but Simon only stayed at Melisandre's party for an hour before quietly leaving.
Just like a scientist who won the Nobel Prize, he is destined not to be excited about a little red flower in the kindergarten.
Over the years, from Sundance to Cannes to the Oscars, Simon has accumulated enough honors in films. More importantly, with Simon's current height, it is difficult for Oscar to attract much attention from him.
The next day there was the usual hubbub in the media.
However, this time, there is not much controversy over the awards for films related to Daenerys Entertainment.
There are five films nominated for Best Picture, and the original Best Picture "Unforgiven", as an old-school western film, is far less competitive than imagined, and the other three films are even more just foils. Therefore, with Daenerys Entertainment's strong public relations offensive, it was easy for "Scent of a Woman" to win the Best Picture statuette.
Al Pacino's Best Actor award is even more deserving.
This Hollywood star who emerged in the 1970s had been nominated for six Oscars before "Scent of a Woman".
Other awards also made little waves.
The media even expressed regret that Daenerys Entertainment's two other outstanding films, "Howards End" and "The Crying Game," only received a few non-core awards.
Of course, even if it is difficult to cause too many waves in Simon's heart, a series of Oscar awards has brought real honors and benefits to Daenerys Entertainment.
After the Oscars, time quickly turns to April.
Over in Europe, Melisandre's acquisition of Christie's auction house was officially revealed.
Regarding this matter, the British media generally showed a posture of resistance, believing that Christie's is an iconic company that represents Britain's historical position in the field of art collection and should not be sold to foreign investors. Some fierce media people even asked the British The government petitioned to ban the deal.
However, in the face of capital, the power of media and public opinion is somewhat weak after all.
What's more, the British public's reaction to this incident is more inclined to watch the excitement: Christie's, which frequently auctions collections worth tens of millions of pounds, is really far away from them.
After last year's pound crisis, the British economy fell into a downturn, and many investors also tended to cash out Christie's shares to increase their cash reserves.
As a result, the transaction was quickly approved by a shareholder vote.
Melisandre Company successfully acquired Christie's, but in North America, Ygritte Company's financing plan was not so smooth.
Speaking of which, if they just want to simply raise funds, there are many investors like Joseph Lewis who have almost no intention of lowering the price and are willing to buy 10% of Eagleite's shares in one bite.
However, the purpose of this financing is not too simple.
When Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs both expressed their clear willingness to invest, Eagleite proposed a financing plan of 5% each. This alone caused dissatisfaction between the two Wall Street investment banks.
Ten percent of Igret's shares are priced at US$1.5 billion. Such an asking price is indeed unaffordable to ordinary investors, but for the two Wall Street giants, they can still afford it if they raise funds.
Everyone also knows that with the current development momentum of Yigrit Company, US$1.5 billion and 10% of the shares are indeed not expensive.
If you buy it now, you will be able to get at least double the return when Yigrit Company IPOs, given the current popularity of technology stocks in the capital market.
Cisco and AOL are the best proof.
Now, the 10% equity transfer share, which is not high in the first place, has to be split in two and shared with others. Of course, the two major investment banks are not satisfied.
However, after several days of negotiations, Simon Westeros clearly had no intention of making concessions in this regard.
In addition, the differences between the two sides do not end there.
The 10% shares sold by Yigrit Company are still Class A shares with only one-tenth of the voting rights. When the two investment banks obtain these shares, they can not only obtain only 1% of Yigrit Company's shares. voting rights and no board seats.
In other words, after investing a huge amount of US$1.5 billion, the two investment banks still have no say in Yigrit.
This is also intolerable to Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, which have always been strong.
Regarding the dual-class share structure, Simon did not make concessions. However, after negotiations, Simon also agreed that after the IPO of Eagle, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley would each obtain a board seat.
Prior to this, because Igret was still a completely private company, it did not have a board of directors for the time being.
After several discussions, the two sides reluctantly reached an agreement in this regard.
Then there was the issue of the $1.5 billion fund itself.
For this money, the original plan provided by Ygrit Company was that US$500 million was transferred to the account of Ygrit Company as financing and used for the development of Ygrit itself, and the other one billion US dollars was returned to the Westeros Company. All, considered the proceeds from the sale of 10% equity.
After all, for this equity transfer, it is actually quite accurate to say that the Westeros Company sold 10% of Igrit's shares.
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley would certainly disagree.
Although US$500 million is already a large amount of money, for Eagleite Company, if it were like the year before, it might be burned out in one year.
Once funds are in short supply, another financing will be necessary. By then, whether it is equity financing or bond financing, the cost will be spread to Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, which have become shareholders of Yigrit.
The best plan in the eyes of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley is of course that all US$1.5 billion should be transferred to the account of Ygritte.
However, for the two investment banks, the Westeros Company's plan is also reasonable.
After all, US$1.5 billion is a pretty huge sum of money.
If it were the two investment banks themselves, they would certainly not be willing to spend all the money on Ygritte.
In fact, executives at Goldman Sachs and Morgan got it wrong this time.
Simon has no intention of directly taking a share of this huge sum of money. The reason why he proposed this distribution plan is just a bargaining chip.
The Westeros system is not short of money.
This is the point.
On the other hand, if the proceeds from the sale of stocks of this billion US dollars are included in the Westeros company account, capital gains tax will be paid.
At the current federal tax rate, one billion US dollars would require a tax contribution of US$280 million to the IRS.
Simon has no intention of being a good tax-paying citizen.
In comparison, if he really needs additional funds, he would prefer to obtain a loan from a bank.
The more you reach the top of this social pyramid, the more you understand that only by spending as much other people's money as possible on your own affairs can you go further.
The US$1.5 billion this time is actually a bit too much for Yigrit Company. Yigrit Company itself already has sufficient revenue scale to provide itself with a steady stream of funds, and Simon does not. On the contrary, after this financing, he will further strengthen the financial supervision of Yigrit Company to avoid wanton squandering.
In this way, just this 1.5 billion US dollars will be enough for Yigret Company for three to five years.
Taking into account the IPO in 1995, Igret's cash reserves will be even richer by then.
Having too much money and not spending it as soon as possible is actually not a good thing.
Fortunately, Yigrit Company already has its own venture capital department. Simon's plan is that after completing this financing, Yigrit Company will significantly increase its external investment while developing itself, making itself 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 spent two hours on the second floor of the cinema, mainly watching the samples of "The Lion King". The production of this second 3D animated film by Pixar has been 80% completed. However, because The animated film has a cumbersome production process, and it will not be officially completed until August. Fortunately, the film is scheduled for the end of the year, so August is not too late.
At noon, we returned to Dumeijia Manor with our female assistant for dinner.
After lunch, the female assistant's work for the day was basically over, and she was left behind by Janet. The two women planned to go shopping together. Simon returned to the studio, and Girl A took over Jennifer's work.
"Boss, this is the memorandum of this morning's meeting between Vice President Gore and executives of major telecommunications companies that just came from Washington."
Of course, the information superhighway plan will not be accomplished by just passing a bill. It will also require the federal government to take concrete measures to promote it.
Simon already knew in advance the purpose of today's meeting between Vice President Gore and the heads of major telecommunications companies, which was mainly to discuss telecom companies' increase in investment in Internet industry infrastructure.
The meeting was attended by the heads of Verizon Telecom and AOL, both companies in the Westeros system.
The share of the US$400 billion investment in the information highway plan over two decades that is directly funded by the federal government is actually very small. However, this year, the federal financial allocation for the information superhighway program is actually only US$650 million.
Most investments still need to be made by private capital under the leadership of federal information industry policies.
Four hundred billion US dollars over twenty years seems very large, but as long as it is profitable, the capital flowing into this industry is actually far more than that.
In Simon's memory, during the most turbulent period of the Internet bubble two thousand years ago, more than US$70 billion was invested in new technologies in one year, not counting the even larger capital from outsiders speculating on technology stocks.
This time, AOL has proven in advance that the ISP industry has great potential. Even without the guidance of the federal government, major telecommunications giants will strengthen their investment in new technology fields.
In today's meeting, what Simon is most concerned about is the tax incentive plan launched by the White House for new technology fields.
Opening the memo in his hand, Simon asked another question: "How are the negotiations in New York going?"
Alison shook her head: "There is no new news coming yet."
No new news, just no progress.
Simon was not in a hurry.
If Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley insist on refusing to compromise, he does not have other options. After all, this transaction is a typical seller's market.
At worst, all 10% of the shares will be sold to one of them.
Or choose another investment bank.
These days, as Yigrit Company becomes more and more dazzling, there are actually more troubles.
According to a recent report, Yigret has suffered 11 litigation disputes in copyright, patent, monopoly and other aspects.
The largest one came from a comprehensive lawsuit filed by the Hearst Group, claiming $100 million on the grounds that Eaglet had misappropriated a large amount of Hearst's news, pictures and other content.
Traditional media has obviously once again felt the threat of Internet media.
Regarding this infringement lawsuit, in fact, it is basically content uploaded by users themselves, and there are even obvious traces of human manipulation.
However, Yigret Company has already planned for this situation.
Although the Internet Safe Harbor Act is still being lobbied, the user terms of Yigrit Company also have corresponding provisions. As long as the copyright owner confirms that the content is infringing, it can contact Yigrit Company for active deletion.
However, the Hearst Group did not do this. Instead, it directly launched a lawsuit after collecting a large amount of 'infringement' evidence.
At the same time, many newspapers of the Hearst Group are making efforts to require the federal government to strengthen copyright protection in the Internet field while developing the information industry.
Back then, the Hearst Corporation single-handedly provoked the Spanish-American War, 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 limit the development of Internet media that has become increasingly turbulent.
However, this time, neither Igret nor the federal government can let the Hearst Group lead the way.
After responding to the lawsuit, while using the media resources of the entire Westeros system to fight back, Ygrit quickly provided a large amount of evidence that it proactively dealt with infringing content, which is enough to prove that Ygrit Company attaches great importance to copyright protection. , but the content volume of the Internet platform is too huge, and it is simply impossible to actively review all content. If this must be done, the Internet industry will not be able to continue to develop.
The legal team of Igret also pointed out that after the Hearst Group confirmed that the content was infringing, it did not contact Igret for proactive processing. Instead, it directly launched 'blackmail'.
After several confrontations between the two sides, Hearst Group was clearly at a disadvantage even though it controlled a large number of media platforms.
Moreover, at the government level, the White House did not side with the Hearst Group this time.
Bill Clinton is about to use the Internet industry to revive the U.S. economy ambitiously. Even if the Hearst Group belongs to the Democratic Party and is related to its own political future, it will certainly not allow the Hearst Group to jump out and disrupt the situation this time.