Simon returned to Los Angeles from San Francisco in the evening of February 9.
When I got home, Kathryn Bigelow, whom I hadn't seen for a while, came to visit. She was drinking coffee and chatting with Janet by the glass curtain wall of Shell Villa where the sunset was perfect.
Catherine was a little embarrassed to see Simon.
Mainly due to the failure of "Detroit", this movie has long been canceled. In the end, the North American box office barely exceeded 10 million US dollars, and it won nothing in terms of awards.
Of course, Simon had no grudges about this. He hugged Catherine and moved to the couch next to where Janet was sitting. He leaned over and rested his head on Janet's lap in an awkward manner. On the other side, he kicked off his leather shoes and threw them casually next to him. .
Catherine looked at the scene in front of her with a smile on her face. A certain little man could be so casual only if he didn't treat her as an outsider, so she asked: "Are you too busy at work and tired?"
Simon just hummed.
I'm not physically tired, it's mainly because I'm feeling tired these days.
Janet held Simon's head affectionately on her lap, ran one hand along the man's hair, and said silently to Catherine with a smile: "Excessive indulgence."
Catherine just glared at Janet who was not doing her business.
There's no way to answer the call.
Simon felt something. With his eyes closed, he touched Janet's little hand and held it in his palm. He tightened it suddenly and asked in the woman's soft scream: "What bad things can you say about me?"
Simon didn't use any force, but the startled Janet didn't take her little hand away from the man's palm. She dragged a big hand to her mouth and took a bite. Then she asked, "Kate and I are going to the exhibition tomorrow morning. We’re going to see an art exhibition at the center, Pop, do you want to come with us?”
"No."
"Let's go together. There's a charity exhibition. We can do good things."
"Is it okay to do bad things?"
"Okay, tomorrow you go over and deliberately destroy some famous paintings, and then you can make headlines. Simon Westeros is mentally disturbed again, tsk, and then I can become the Westeros family. 700 billion, um, 900 billion Guardian of a vast fortune in U.S. dollars.”
"What happens next?"
"Transfer you back to Watsonville Mental Hospital."
Simon laughed: "This seems to be the plot of a movie."
"Um?"
"Two years ago, James Spader starred in "Female Lovers". The male protagonist was framed by an evil wife who tried to seize his property and was sent to a mental hospital. Guess how he turned the tables?"
Janet blinked: "How did you turn the tables?"
Catherine next to her also showed a curious expression.
Simon was still resting with his eyes closed, but he just raised his hand to grab Janet's slender neck to test the feel, and then took it back.
Janet understood: "That's amazing."
Catherine was confused: "What?"
Janet explained to Catherine: "It is not illegal for a mentally ill person to kill someone."
Catherine reacted this time and looked at the two of them. Even though she understood that it was just a joke, one wanted to send the other to a mental hospital, and the other wanted to kill the other, and the one who was killed in the setting looked quite excited. . It seemed that she had... In short, the two people in front of her were both crazy at heart, and she wouldn't be able to suppress this relationship.
Everyone continued chatting as dusk fell.
Catherine was invited to stay for dinner together, and was assigned to take care of a little guy. Although she was bitten by Nick, who had not yet given up the habit of grinding his teeth, she was inexplicably envious of the atmosphere in the Westeros family.
He just had dinner and refused to stay.
After sending Catherine off, it was around eight o'clock in the evening. The family gathered in a living room on the east side of Shell Villa. It was not until the five little ones fell asleep one after another that Simon and the two Jennys had time to talk privately.
Mainly it's recent stuff.
Simon decisively gave up the reduction plan that was originally intended to last for one year. In fact, it was far from being as lighthearted as it seemed.
Just like the assassination incident two years ago that triggered a series of subsequent turmoil, the cause was that the Woodfield family bet too much money on short-selling technology stocks. As a result, they made a misjudgment. In order to recover the losses, they had to take an eccentric approach and wanted to assassinate Simon. to cause market shocks.
The situation now is much more serious than it was two years ago.
Because they are bullish on technology stocks, countless people have poured into the Nasdaq market, either directly buying large amounts of stocks, or sparing no effort to build long positions. The interests of many people are tied to the rising trend of Nasdaq. This kind of Under such circumstances, Simon wants to buck the trend and suppress technology stocks, and the risks involved can be imagined.
Therefore, after feeling the pressure and even warnings from all aspects, in addition to decisively abandoning the established reduction strategy, Simon also raised the security level around his family to the highest level. The Westeros family's private intelligence network has also begun to operate at full speed these days to ensure Deal with potential crises in advance as soon as they arise.
In the final analysis, the influence of the Westeros system is still not strong enough to truly control the United States and even the world economy.
To do this, Simon needs to completely integrate the US$900 billion in personal assets that are only on the books at this time with the global economy. In this case, if he wants to control it in the future, he does not even need to do it himself in the Westeros system, as long as When Simon speaks, someone will do it for him.
Only in this way can the power of huge wealth be brought into full play.
The revolution has not yet succeeded, comrades still need to work hard.
In the living room of Shell Villa, Janet was sleeping on Simon's lap this time. She heard the man say these strange words and asked questions with a smile. Then she asked about her visit to the Livermore Laboratory during the day. When she heard When Simon talked about his decision not to support the laser ignition project, Janet blinked: "Why not support it? Have you forgotten, um, that one?"
Of course Simon knew what a woman meant.
The 'Sword of Damocles' plan of the Westeros family.
Of course I haven't forgotten this.
If the Westeros system masters laser ignition, it will be equivalent to possessing the most advanced hydrogen bomb technology. By then, this will become a very powerful deterrent force.
Thinking this way, Simon explained: "It's just that it's not supported now. I plan to start with the magnetic confinement solution first and form two teams at the same time, tokamak and stellarator. When the magnetic confinement solution matures, this aspect will The technical accumulation is also deep enough, and laser ignition is a matter of course."
Janet asked: "What if someone else makes the laser ignition first?"
Simon smiled and said: "This is even simpler. You know, the time for nuclear-armed countries to develop nuclear weapons is always getting shorter and shorter. The reason is that once the solution is proven to be feasible, all you need to do is work in one direction. The same is true for laser ignition. , once someone succeeds, subsequent successes will come one after another. Moreover, judging from the current state of nuclear fusion technology research and development in various countries, even if they are given another twenty years, I don’t think those people can achieve much."
Jennifer, who was sitting quietly on the other side listening to the conversation between the two, asked curiously: "Why?"
Simon turned around and hugged the female assistant, while explaining: "The environment is like this. Without confrontation and faith, it is very difficult for a country or a person to accomplish anything."
Jennifer leaned over obediently and asked, "What about us?"
Simon smiled and said: "We have interests. Without confrontation and faith, the most effective tool to drive a team to overcome technical difficulties is interests. That's why I am not optimistic about research in the aerospace and nuclear energy fields at the national level. Whether in North America, Europe or Asia, researchers in related fields receive very average treatment, and there is serious bureaucracy. Those who have made achievements will not be rewarded, and those who mess up will be severely punished. In this environment, if you want to make progress, Basically impossible. So the current aerospace and nuclear energy fields are still at the level of the 1950s and 1960s. We are different. Not only will I provide them with sufficient budgets, but I will also allocate most of the equity to research as rewards. Team, as long as the technology can make breakthroughs, even if we only retain 10% of the shares in the end, the interests involved will be huge enough."
Janet, who was lying on Simon's lap, added at this time: "In this case, the dual-class share structure must be determined in advance to ensure our control."
"certainly."
Without absolute control, once the Westeros system's shareholding ratio in companies such as SpaceX drops below 50% in the future, these companies will basically fall into the situation of Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
Seeing what Simon said, Janet knew that he had considered all aspects of the whole matter, so she stopped continuing. Instead, she talked about the private intelligence team of the Westeros family. In order to avoid a recurrence of similar incidents two years ago, the woman Recently, the family’s private intelligence team has also been undergoing adjustments.
I had two days off over the weekend.
In the new week, he has been spending Valentine's Day at home. Simon once again left Los Angeles and flew to New York on February 15th to attend the listing ceremony of Tinker Bayer Company on February 16th.
After a two-week road show, Tinco Bayer's intended subscription share reached 17 times the amount of funds raised in the IPO. Faced with such strong market demand, Tinco Bayer re-framed the issuance price, raising the price per share from US$43. It was raised to US$50, thus increasing the IPO valuation from US$35 billion to US$40.7 billion.
Even though it attracted some criticism, a total of 130 million new shares were quickly subscribed.
After all, everyone knows that even though it only increased the issue price by 16%, it is still far behind the $100 billion market value potential of Tinco Bayer predicted by some institutions.
The issuance price was raised to US$50, and the total amount raised by this IPO reached US$6.5 billion. Among them, the value of the 30 million shares of Westeros Company cashed out this time also increased to US$1.5 billion.
On the other hand, in order to avoid long nights and long dreams, several Wall Street giants such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley decisively took over Daenerys, Cisco and AOL that Simon sold out last time after short negotiations with Westeros companies. A total of $3 billion in shares.
After issuing the announcement on reducing its holdings on February 2, in the past two weeks, Westeros has also quickly completed the reduction of its US$2 billion worth of AOL shares.
$1.5 billion plus $3 billion plus $2 billion.
It can be said that in just half a month, Westeros Corporation has cashed out a total of US$6.5 billion in cash from the U.S. capital market. Counting the two previous cash outs from Daenerys Entertainment and Cisco, minus 15% With capital gains taxes, the Westeros Corporation netted about $9 billion.
Because of his 100% shareholding in Westeros, the money actually belongs entirely to Simon.
This amount of money has exceeded the entire net worth of most of the top billionaires of this era.
Moreover, the cash reserves of the entire Westeros system are far more than this.
Just the Yigret family raised more than 20 billion US dollars before and after the IPO last year. Simon has imposed very strict restrictions on the use of this capital. Basically, it does not spend a penny. M&A expansion uses stock swaps as much as possible. Large-scale project investments such as data centers can only use the cash flow generated by Yigret's own revenue.
With such a huge cash reserve, it is not only expected that after the Sino-Singapore technology bubble bursts, the Westeros system will further strengthen its control in the new technology field, but also complete its own diversified expansion.
New York.
Simon arrived on the afternoon of February 15th, which happened to be the last day of New York Fashion Week.
In fact, the four major fashion weeks do not all last for a week, but vary according to the number of participating brands in each major fashion week.
Just like this year, the first New York Fashion Week lasted for 8 days, followed by London Fashion Week, which lasted only 4 days, then Milan Fashion Week, which lasted 7 days, and finally Paris Fashion Week, which lasted the longest. 9 days.
From these data, we can also see the proportion of the fashion industry in each country.
France still leads.
Midtown Manhattan, inside Bryant Park, home of New York Fashion Week.
Lyudmila Besonoskova ended a catwalk show as the closing model, and took a final bow with the designer amidst the applause of the crowd. When she returned to the backstage, she immediately saw Ekaterina standing next to her sister. · Noskova three.
Bichi!
Lyudmila, who was already quite good at English, couldn't help but mutter something in her heart.
After being trained in private for a whole year, Lyudmila finally made her debut during this fashion week, and judging from the feedback in recent days, it can be considered a blockbuster.
With her outstanding appearance and figure and professional qualities that have been trained for a year, Lyudmila can be said to be the most watched new model in this fashion week. In 8 days, including the Marc Jacobs brand of the same name that ended tonight, a total of 21 catwalk shows were attended. Under the operation of Elite, magazines such as "Vogue" and "BAZAAR" reported on Lyudmila.
It's just that I'm not happy at all.
Why
I was busy for more than 12 hours a day, doing 21 catwalk shows, but I could only get paid $1,000 for each show, and Elite had to deduct 30% of the commission, and I had to pay taxes, plus other expenses, it seemed like a week She has earned more than 20,000 US dollars in one time. As a newcomer who has just debuted, many girls who have no roots may be envious and collapse, but Lyudmila wants to go crazy.
She worked so hard that she could only earn 21,000 US dollars a week on her books. Ekaterina came to see the show or, in her opinion, her lively Xiao Bichi, and just strolled around Fifth Avenue. The cost was more than that. Seeing Lyudaeva dangling the recently bought LV bag in front of her, she almost wanted to strangle her to death.
Bichi!
It's so unbalanced.
Why do you have to work so hard
Ahhh.
Of course, in front of the three girls, Lyudmila will not show weakness in any case. It is just the beginning. She is just the beginning. In the future, she will definitely earn millions every year like those top supermodels.
And you.
Hum, wait until one day Simon Westeros is tired of it, then go cry.
Before coming this time, she had heard that the candidates for the singing group that Rivni Media had been quietly selecting had been announced. They were all beautiful and would definitely become Simon Westeros' new favorite.
Anyway.
Ahhh.
She is like a bunch of manic little rabbits in her heart, but on the surface Lyudmila behaves impeccably. This is also the result of being trained in the past year. She chatted familiarly with the person in charge of the Helen Yamak brand from Russia. This is a fur brand, and she likes fur the most. And because she is from Russia, even though the Soviet Union has disintegrated, everyone still speaks Russian and is instinctively friendly.
After chatting for a while, they finally came to the three girls who were still hanging around.
Talking about his Marc Jacobs show in the evening, he secretly gritted his teeth and continued to invite the three Ekaterinas, "Come on, I'm not afraid of you, Xiao Bichi, who can only rely on men!"