Of course, Bill Spurter's promotion was not just because of a party. Simon gave a little fuel to the situation and deliberately asked James Raybould to find out the details of Spurter, making a poaching gesture.
Another casual move out of habit.
Regardless of whether it can be used in the future, it won't hurt.
What Simon didn't expect was that UBS would have the courage to directly promote Bill Spurter to the position of head of the large business department. Although it was only two promotions in a row on the surface, many investment bank employees would not reach any of the thresholds in their entire careers. You can definitely get through it.
Of course, Simon wouldn't spend too much energy on such small things.
After the two parties reached a settlement, the Hearst family disclosed the news to the public the next day. The other party originally wanted to be vague, but Simon did not give them a chance. The New York Post subsequently leaked the details of the settlement in a gossipy tone. The general details include the sale of ESPN shares for US$1 and the full compensation of 370 million in 6 lawsuits.
Simon wants to use the "tragic" experience of the Hearst family to frighten all potential opponents of the Westeros system.
Judging from the feedback during this period, the effect is very obvious. The North American media has already formed a clear chilling effect when discussing matters related to the Westeros system. After all, the powerful Hearst Group went to Simon Westeros in front of him. After half a life, there are definitely not many media power in the United States that exceeds that of the Hearst family.
Without the constraints of the Westeros system, the Hearst family has restarted the asset sale some time ago. Judging from preliminary feedback, it is estimated that it can recover US$300 million, which is equivalent to a 60% discount.
Metropolis ABC Group, the parent company of the ABC TV network, also submitted a transaction application to the Hearst family under Simon's secret instruction, hoping to buy back the 50% share of the AE TV network shares held by the Hearst family and set a price 200 million US dollars is equivalent to a half discount on the original price. Even if there is a lot of bargaining in the future, the price will not be increased too much.
The Hearst family was still hesitating about which assets to sell to raise more funds, and ABC's invitation helped them make a decision.
Two transactions and US$500 million in cash are basically enough for the Hearst family to tide over the current difficulties.
Careful people can also easily find that, excluding the ESPN shares that were almost given away and the assets that are about to be sold, the total value of the remaining assets of the Hearst family is actually less than 1 billion US dollars. It only took three months for a century-old media family with total family assets of US$2.5 billion to fall into this situation.
Moreover, even if the difficulties are temporarily over, the Hearst family's troubles are far from over.
For example, the "San Francisco Chronicle" accounts for almost half of the Hearst family's remaining assets. Due to the increasing penetration of personal computers in the San Francisco area and the targeted operation of the Westeros system in the past few months, many residents will The channel for obtaining news information has shifted from print media to the Internet, which has caused the number of subscribers of the San Francisco Chronicle to continue to decrease at a visible rate in the past quarter. It is expected that at the end of the second quarter of 1994, this large regional newspaper with a century-old history will post its first quarterly loss in many years.
For an industry that has entered a period of decline, once it falls into a loss, it is definitely not an easy thing to reverse.
What's more, the Hearst Group is already severely damaged.
Without this crisis, the Hearst Corporation could mobilize enough resources to revive the business of the San Francisco Chronicle as much as possible. Now, it is a broken ship floating in the ocean with leaks on all sides, and it is difficult to repair it. Ascend to heaven.
After three months of confrontation, the matter has initially come to an end. In addition to letting people around him continue to keep an eye on the Hearst Group in order to push the other party into the abyss at the right time, Simon himself will no longer follow up on the matter personally. .
We are continuing to prepare for the launch of Daenerys Entertainment on July 1st, and the summer season in North America is also continuing.
During the week from June 24th to June 30th, North American theaters once again released two relatively important new films, namely "Beverly Cop 3" produced by Paramount Pictures and "The Bomb" produced by Fox Pictures. Genre action thriller "Zero Point Blasting".
After two popular "Beverly Cop" series were released in 1984 and 1987, the third installment was delayed until July because Paramount and the film's star Eddie Murphy were unable to reach an agreement on the salary. Now years later.
After so many years of delay, Eddie Murphy got what he wanted, the top salary at this stage of US$15 million, and the production cost of this sequel reached a blockbuster level of US$50 million.
Paramount has prepared 2,936 screening screens for this classic action comedy sequel, which opened last Friday. The opening screen size of nearly 3,000 is second only to "Batman: The Dark Knight Rises" among the films that have been launched this summer. 》.
Immediately, it was similar to what happened to "City Hillbilly 2" last week.
The reputation is also ruined.
Compared with the 1.8 media score of "City Hillbilly 2", "Beverly Cop 3" has an even lower reputation, with a comprehensive media score of only 1.1.
However, relying on the sparing no effort in publicity and the influence of the film's predecessor far surpassing the "City Hillbilly" series, the first-week box office of "Beverly Cop 3" was not bad at all, reaching US$21.96 million. Although it only ranked third on the list, its opening box office results of more than 20 million US dollars still gave Paramount something to think about.
From the week of June 24th to June 30th, the top spot on the weekly box office list is still "Batman: The Dark Knight Rises". The film dropped 32% this week, collecting another 32.31 million US dollars, and the cumulative box office reached 272.533 billion US dollars. Ten thousand U.S. dollars.
After grossing US$42.39 million in its first week, "The Conjuring" did not show phenomenal box office potential. The box office dropped as much as 43% the next week, and it collected another US$24.15 million. The cumulative box office in two weeks is US$66.54 million, which is expected to be recovered next week. A total investment of US$40 million in production and promotion.
At the same time, with the promotion of the New World Pictures team, the discussion about the Conjuring movie universe has become a hot topic among movie fans recently. The first spin-off film of the Conjuring movie universe "The Haunting of the Morgue" scheduled for Halloween has officially The publicity plan has attracted widespread attention from the media and the public even before it was launched.
After "Beverly Cop 3" ranked third, Fox's new film "Zero Zero" ranked fourth, with a box office of US$13.15 million in the first seven days.
neither warm nor hot.
Fox has invested a production budget of US$28 million for this action thriller starring Jeff Bridges. Counting publicity and distribution, the total investment exceeds US$40 million. The box office revenue was US$13.15 million in the first week. If Fox wants to recover its costs through box office, it can only hope that the film will have a miraculous box office trend.
As a popcorn commercial film, this hope is obviously not high.
The fifth place on the list was taken by "Speed of Life and Death".
In its sixth week of release, this action movie with excellent reputation surpassed last week's short-lived "City 2". This week's box office dropped only 19%. It collected another US$6.73 million, and the total North American box office reached US$95.22 million. It is expected that It will officially exceed 100 million next week.
Outside of the top five, other films such as "City Hillbillies 2" have basically withdrawn from the summer competition.
Before the new box office week on July 1st, Daenerys Entertainment held a grand premiere for "Forrest Gump", another super blockbuster in Simon's mind in 1994, on Wednesday, June 29th as usual. Screening ceremony.
I don’t know if there is a deviation in my memory, but the original cast and crew are basically maintained and the effect of the film is no less than the original "Forrest Gump" in Simon's memory. After the word-of-mouth ban was lifted the next day after the premiere, it did not gain too much praise. received praise, and the comprehensive media score was only about 7.4 points.
A film critic from The Seattle Times unceremoniously criticized "Forrest Gump": "Only in America can you see a movie that uses a fool as a medium throughout the country's recent history, and he is not even a movie." satirical film'.
The original work of "Forrest Gump" is a satirical novel, which is why the film critic of "The Seattle Times" made such an argument.
For the same reason, the novelist Winston Bloom, who was pushed out by the main creator during the screenwriting stage, also publicly stated after the premiere that the film completely deviated from his original intention of creating "Forrest Gump" and completely went away. The skewed movie theme therefore appears even more 'ridiculous'.
In fact, the media reputation of 7.4 points is definitely not bad compared with films such as "City Hillbillies 2" and "Beverly Cop 3". It's just that this summer's "Star Wars" related to Daenerys Entertainment "The Door", "The Dark Knight Rises" and even the horror film "The Conjuring", immediately pale in comparison. The comprehensive media ratings of the latter few films are all above 8 points at the excellent level.
Simon developed a relatively conservative promotion strategy for "Forrest Gump", hoping to form a phenomenal long-term box office trend through word-of-mouth from the audience. Therefore, the film opened on only 2,137 screens.
Now, the opening reputation has not met expectations, and the box office prospects of "Forrest Gump" have suddenly been cast into a haze.
Under Daenerys Entertainment's good cost control, the final production cost of "Forrest Gump" was US$50 million, which was US$5 million lower than the original version. However, US$50 million still reached the level of a real blockbuster in this era.
Even with a relatively conservative distribution strategy, the film's publicity budget reached US$20 million.
With a production cost of 50 million US dollars, a publicity investment of 20 million US dollars, and a total project budget of 70 million US dollars, even if it were all lost, Daenerys Entertainment would not be able to break the bones.
Unfortunately, "Forrest Gump" was released at a very unfortunate time.
The film will premiere on July 1, the day Daenerys Entertainment Group will officially be listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
As Bill Spurter said at the party last Friday night, the uncertainty in the film industry has always been the main reason that has discouraged a lot of capital. If Daenerys Entertainment Group just went public, it would immediately encounter a total of 70 million US dollars. The investment movie failed miserably at the box office. It is conceivable that this incident will inevitably affect the stock trend of Daenerys Entertainment Group.
No matter what, July 1st came on time.
Daenerys Entertainment Group finally chose to be listed on the traditional New York Stock Exchange instead of the emerging NASDAQ exchange. There are many reasons for this. The main reason is that the market of the New York Stock Exchange is more mature. In addition, In order to compete with Nasdaq, the New York Stock Exchange also gave Daenerys Entertainment more preferential conditions.
Yes, in the United States, listed companies can negotiate terms with the exchange. Including commissions with underwriters, etc., there is also room for negotiation.
This is especially true for large-scale IPOs like Daenerys Entertainment, which raised more than $5 billion.
For ordinary corporate IPOs, the commission ratio in various aspects often accounts for about 10% to 15% of the total amount of funds raised. Daenerys Entertainment’s IPO was negotiated with the New York Stock Exchange, underwriters and other related institutions, including investment banks. Commissions, exchange fees, accounting and legal fees, etc., the total expenditure is expected to be only US$160 million, accounting for only 2.8% of the total fundraising amount of US$5.625 billion.
This is the result of Daenerys Entertainment management’s continuous consultation with all parties in advance.
Of course, US$160 million is already a very considerable income for all parties. The total amount of IPO funds raised by most companies in the US stock market may not reach US$160 million.
After briefly returning to Los Angeles for the weekend last week, the Simons returned to the East Coast again on Monday.
On July 1, before 7 o'clock in the morning, the couple had already had breakfast and rushed from their apartment on Fifth Avenue to the famous 18 Broadway, the headquarters of the New York Stock Exchange.
Hundreds of media outlets from all over the world have been guarding outside the New York Stock Exchange since last night, and some senior executives of Daenerys Entertainment Group also stayed at the New York Stock Exchange headquarters all night.
At the gate of the New York Stock Exchange, Simon and his wife had just gotten out of the car, and the surroundings were suddenly illuminated by dazzling and intensive spotlights.
The security team deployed in advance formed a human wall to protect Simon and his wife as they entered the exchange building.
In order to make today's IPO foolproof, the Westeros system has quietly taken over the security affairs of the New York Stock Exchange half a month ago. Simon is very clear about how obvious he is at this time. In addition to the 150 security guards on the surface, There are uniforms and plainclothes all over the streets, and there are hundreds of people from the Westeros family intelligence team roaming around Manhattan.
Facts have proved that these measures are very necessary.
In just half a month, the Westeros family’s intelligence team successfully intercepted three cases of unscrupulous individuals trying to cause trouble on the day of Daenerys Entertainment’s IPO.
Two of them wanted to shoot Simon on the day of the IPO, and another, a veteran from Oklahoma, even planned to plant a car bomb outside the gate of the New York Stock Exchange. The reasons vary. Some people think that Simon's huge wealth has threatened American society. Some people think that anomalies like Simon should not exist in this world at all. The retired soldier in Oklahoma was because of Simon's campaign in Africa. war.
In the final analysis, Simon's huge wealth and power at this time have aroused the vigilance and fear of more and more people.
Hatred of the rich is a negative public sentiment that has existed for a long time since human society entered the civilized era, and is often used by those in power to channel public grievances.
Therefore, Simon also knew very well that his situation at this time was simply unavoidable, and he did not have too much fear about it.
If you want to wear the crown, you must bear its weight. Everything has its own two sides.
Because it was a relatively sensitive time, Simon did not let the three captured guys disappear, but secretly escorted them to the FBI.
However, the Westeros family launched a deeper investigation into the trio's motives.
If it turns out that someone else was behind the scenes, Simon will still not be polite this time.
As for the three people involved, prison is inevitable. Even if they are released from prison in the future, both themselves and those around them will be listed as key monitoring targets in the Westeros system. Simon will only tolerate this potential threat at best. once.