Hollywood has entered the blockbuster era. In order to prevent Hollywood from entering the superhero era that will seriously impact the diversity of movies, Simon has been revising the development plan of the DC movie universe in recent years and continuously lengthening the development cycle. The Marvel movie universe The plan was therefore shelved by Simon.
After "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" at the end of the year, and before "Justice League", there are three DC movie projects that have been confirmed, namely "Wonder Woman 2", "The Flash 2" and "Suicide Squad 2" , Warner has been promoting "Cyborg 2". As long as the script is suitable, Simon cannot be completely stuck.
So, by the time "Justice League" is actually released, it may already be 2000.
This is also a time point that Simon prefers.
The millennium is a great gathering of DC superheroes, which is very memorable.
In the banquet hall of the Marriott Hotel, Jack Welch, who had learned about the DC movie universe plan in advance, was a little disappointed when he heard Simon say that he could negotiate to recover the copyright after "Justice League". In fact, for Warner, being able to take back the copyrights of the DC Big Three, even if it takes five years, is very worth looking forward to. With the huge success of the DC movie universe, Warner did not even expect that Simon would be willing to let go.
Jack Welch couldn't wait five years.
Because he will retire by then, and once he leaves, these things will have nothing to do with him.
However, since Simon said this, Jack Welch also knew that he had no room for bargaining. Even though the agreement to acquire Time Warner had just been finalized, he saw the matter very clearly.
The initiative of the DC movie universe is completely in the hands of Daenerys Entertainment. Especially after the box office failure of Warner Bros.'s "Waterworld" this summer, Warner's dependence on the DC movie universe has become even stronger. On the contrary, Daenerys For entertainment, even if the DC movie universe is lost immediately, there are still equally successful "Jurassic Park" series, Pixar animated series, The Conjuring movie universe series and other projects that can be developed.
If Warner uses strong tactics to try to recover the copyright, the result is more likely to be a mixed bag.
When things couldn't be done, Jack Welch didn't hesitate. Instead, he chatted with Simon about the Internet industry and asked Simon for his opinion on the e-commerce business that General Electric was planning.
Ordinary people usually understand e-commerce as buying things online. In fact, there are many types of e-commerce, including B2B (business to business), B2C (business to individual), C2C (individual to individual), etc. Online shopping is just One of them.
Therefore, when Jack Welch mentioned that established giants like General Electric would also launch e-commerce business, Simon did not feel threatened at all. GE's e-commerce was most likely to be B2B only, and would not compete with Amazon and Amazon in the Westeros system. Platforms such as eBay compete and are expected to become important customers of YWS.
The two had a heated discussion for more than ten minutes, and Simon offered to arrange a meeting between Jack Welch and Carol Butts, who is responsible for the YWS business of Ygritte, to discuss possible cooperation between the two parties in depth.
YWS (Ygritte Web Service) was launched in 1991 and has developed to the present. After four years of continuous research and development, this business of Ygritte is no longer a rudimentary server rental, but has truly begun to transform into the cloud computing in Simon's memory. Platform, the three models of IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service) and SaaS (Software as a Service) that were the mainstream cloud computing business in time and space, are all beginning to be involved in the current YWS.
If we can win over traditional industrial giant customers in the non-Internet field such as General Electric, we will definitely be able to significantly expand YWS's business breadth.
The next day is October 28th.
Saturday.
The news of General Electric's acquisition of Time Warner finally diverted the media from the Forbes 400 list of America's richest people released on Monday. Simon also left the United States that afternoon and flew to Ukraine.
It has been eight months since the formal agreement with the Ukrainian local government was reached in February of this year. The Nokia factory located in the north of Rivni has been completed and will be officially put into production on October 30. Simon is going to attend the 10 The commissioning ceremony was held on March 30th.
Simon was very pleased with the speed with which the project was completed.
At this stage, it is difficult to build a factory of the same size in North America or Western Europe without spending two or three years. Moreover, even if the factory is built, it may not be able to be put into production.
However, the Nokia factory in Rivni completed the process of worker training and equipment installation at the same time as the construction of the factory building was completed.
Even though the Soviet Union has disappeared, the institutional advantages brought by the Soviet system still exist.
This is exactly what Simon likes.
Of course, what is more important is the increasingly powerful voice of the Westeros system in the northwestern border state of Ukraine.
Otherwise, certain institutional advantages will only turn into institutional disadvantages.
After Ukraine's second president Leon Kuchma came to power last year, he quickly promoted a series of reform measures, but failed to reverse Ukraine's domestic economy, which continued to slide into the abyss. Under the strong control of the Westeros system, Rivni The city has become the only bright spot in this country's economy. Due to various actual and potential interests, even though the Westeros system's control of Rivni has exceeded certain limits, the Ukrainian authorities dare not rashly disturb this A hard-won situation.
Therefore, not only the Nokia factory is about to start production, but the entire city of Rivni and even Rivne Oblast are in a state of prosperity.
When Simon first came to Rivni last year, the city was just like other regions in Ukraine. It was decadent and withered. A large number of people moved to rural areas where they could cultivate food for the most basic survival. Now, he comes again In just over a year since arriving in this city, the population of Rivni has surged from a low of 220,000 last year to 510,000 now.
Ordinary people always cannot see too deep things. They just know that this city can bring them the most valuable job opportunities. This is where hope lies.
The surge in population has inevitably made the city of Rivni a mixed bag. However, both the official level and the underground forces are firmly controlled by the Westeros system, not to mention that there is also a... A powerful private army, those who want to cause trouble in Rivni will not end up well, and the rest are just small fish and shrimps that cannot become big things.
Thanks to the high execution rate brought about by strong control, Rivni has shown a faint tendency to become a major light industry town in Ukraine.
Ukraine has inherited a large number of heavy industrial assets from the former Soviet Union. However, tanks and artillery cannot be used as food. The light industry that provides residents with various types of basic daily necessities is the area that Ukraine needs to develop most urgently at this stage. Since then, the Ukrainian authorities have been trying to promote this matter, but the effect is not very good.
The reason is very simple: lack of money.
The national economy is like the rivers and lakes that connect all aspects of public life.
Funds are like water.
Only with sufficient funds can dry and stagnant rivers and lakes flow through and be rejuvenated.
A large amount of funds from the Westeros system were injected into Rivne State, coupled with strong coordination and control, which prevented the funds from being wasted for no reason and quickly revived the area. It is conceivable that when Rivne State As the rivers and lakes gradually fill up, they are bound to flow to other areas of the country.
The owner of the water will not change.
This will inevitably lead to further penetration and control.
Rivni Airport will not be opened until next year. Simon arrived in Kiev on Sunday morning local time and rushed to Rivni by car.
As the most important investment introduced by this country in recent years, the current Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko chose to go to Rivne Oblast with Simon and planned to attend the commissioning ceremony in the afternoon.
In the era when the greenhouse effect has not yet exploded, snow began to fall in Ukraine at the end of October.
Traveling through the snow-covered plains of northern Ukraine, Simon chatted animatedly with Lazarenko, who offered to ride in the same car with him. Even though he disliked this person very much, it did not prevent the two from chatting and laughing. Since Lazarenko and Kuchma came to power together, in addition to not allowing the other party to interfere with the layout of the Westeros system in Rivne Oblast, Simon has done what they want and has no regard for the Ukrainian prime minister, who is known for his greed. stingy.
It has completely fed several talkers in the Kiev authorities and is also the key to the smooth layout of the Westeros system.
After arriving in Rivni at around ten o'clock in the morning, Simon handed over the task of receiving Lazarenko and his party to Sergey Komorov, the head of Oldek Company, and refused on the grounds that he was tired from the journey. The luncheon arranged by Komorov could not go away from the evening entertainment anyway.
Lunch time was actually reserved for several leaders of UFMS.
Regarding Ukraine, what Simon cares about most is the Uighur private army here.
Otherwise, Simon wouldn’t bother settling in Ukraine when there are so many investment opportunities that promise better returns.
Even though he rarely comes to Ukraine, Simon has always paid close attention to UFMS. He has only created three channels to obtain information on all aspects of UFMS. Klim Derevyanko, the direct person in charge of UFMS, and the person in charge of Oldek Company Sergei Komorov and the secretive Ukrainian branch of House Westerosi's private intelligence team.
Simon's personal military assistant Celia Miller puts most of her thoughts here.
Therefore, Simon's knowledge of the UFMS, in some aspects, is even deeper than that of Klim Derevyanko, and he has the same control.
The lunch that started at 11:30 lasted for an hour and a half. Simon set off from his villa in the south of the city at one o'clock in the afternoon and rushed to the Nokia factory in the northern suburbs of Rivni.
In addition to Simon and the current Ukrainian Prime Minister Lazarenko, Nokia CEO Jorma Ollila has also stayed here for two days.
Although Nokia plans to focus its mobile phone manufacturing in China, Jorma Olia strongly agrees with Simon that eggs cannot be put in one basket. Therefore, Nokia promotes a multi-supplier procurement strategy for components under Simon's suggestion. At the same time, there are also plans to build Rivni into Nokia's second mobile phone manufacturing center.
Therefore, this factory with an annual output of 1 million mobile phones is just the beginning.
Nokia's mobile phone sales this year are expected to exceed 20 million units. As long as the current factory is put into operation smoothly, Nokia will start building a second, larger factory on the 150 hectares of land that it has previously reserved as soon as possible.
Not only that, companies such as Tinco Bayer in the Westeros system have also been paying attention to the Nokia factory in Rivni in order to build their own factories here to support the European market.
If you want to form an OEM system, the most difficult thing is not factory construction or worker training, but the complete supporting supporting industry chain.
By helping to introduce investment to the Rivne Nuclear Power Plant, as long as the new units of the nuclear power plant start operating in the next two years, the energy problem can be solved. At this stage, because the technology involved in mobile phones is relatively cutting-edge, most parts must be imported from Western Europe and North America. This also largely makes up for the shortcoming of Rivne Oblast’s inability to produce components.
However, due to the need to reduce costs, there is still a lot that can be done on the Ukrainian side.
While Oldek Company, headed by Sergey Komorov, established a vocational training school to train workers for Nokia factories, it also undertook orders to provide external packaging for Nokia mobile phones through one of its subsidiaries. Komorov We are also trying to further provide injection molded casings for Nokia mobile phones. Step by step, we will then move to circuit boards and even some components with low technical requirements, and gradually we will be able to form an increasingly complete supply chain.
As the supply chain becomes more complete, more manufacturers will inevitably be attracted to invest and build factories in Rivni.
This forms a virtuous cycle.
Simon also plans to let Oldek Company personally get involved in the OEM field in order to further control the cheap human resources in Ronov Oblast and even Ukraine as a whole.
In the past, Ukraine lost one-fifth of its more than 50 million citizens due to unsustainable domestic survival. Tens of millions of people fled the country, which was a spectacle. This time, even if only one-tenth of the people who had fled Ukraine were in control. The human resources of one or two are enough for the Westeros system to establish a huge OEM empire in Ukraine.
Taking control of other people's jobs is actually equivalent to having domination to a certain extent.
The commissioning ceremony that afternoon lasted for an hour.
At the end of the ceremony, Lazarenko and other senior Ukrainian government officials who came to watch the ceremony were sent away. Simon did not leave. Instead, he and Jorma Ollila and others visited the assembly process that started running inside the factory. Although it was Sunday, now Eastern Europe does not have the same rules as Western Europe. Once the factory here is put into production, it will take turns to operate non-stop 24 hours a day.
What Ukraine lacks most now is people.
If you don’t want to work overtime, if you dislike the low salary, or even if you are slacking off at work, it’s easy to just pack up and get out. There are plenty of people who want this job.
Simon stayed at the Nokia factory until evening, returned to the city, continued to attend the evening reception, and did not return to the villa in the south of the city until late at night.
The next two days were all kinds of busy, going over the properties of the Westeros system here one by one, and sending out some unavoidable greetings, and so on until November 1, Wednesday, After a little leisure time, Simon rushed to the Ukrainian Peace Military Theme Park, which was basically completed in northern Rivni, to relax for a while.
In fact, it’s still work.
Compared with professional theme parks like Universal Studios, this theme park covering an area of 20 square kilometers can only be described as rough. The only advantage is probably that the area is large enough.
Simon did not become indifferent because of the roughness of the project. Instead, he took it very seriously. He not only sent the team from Universal Studios under Daenerys to participate in the planning of the project, but also personally provided a lot of suggestions. The park will open in the spring of next year. Targeted primarily at Western European and North American customers, it provides an immersive military experience.
When Girl A brought a blond woman wearing a black trench coat and high leather boots to find Simon, he was at the shooting range of the theme park, holding up the big Barrett gun that he had fallen in love with after hunting in the Alaskan wilderness last time. , with his status, it is easy to bring such a 'toy' with him anytime and anywhere.
The blond woman's name is Charlotte Brenita, from Switzerland, and her title is the president of the venture capital department of Brenita Asset Management Company, which is just 'Brenita Asset Management Company', which corresponds to the woman's name, probably You can judge the relationship between a woman and this company.
Family business.
This is the head of a European fund that Grace recommended to Simon a few days ago who hopes to invest in the Instagram website.
At that time, Simon heard Grace say that the woman was very beautiful, and he joked that he must meet her. He didn't take it too seriously at the time, but the other party took it seriously and took the initiative to contact the meeting. It happened that Simon was also very interested in Swiss Capital, which has always been mysterious and low-key, so he agreed. Come down.