With the continuous skyrocketing of Comcast's stock price, Firefly Group resolutely stopped the buying operation, and finally reached 7.1% of the company's shareholding ratio.
Since Comcast is already a publicly held company, the ownership structure is very scattered, and no shareholder even holds more than 10% of the shares. Therefore, with its 7.1% shareholding, Firefly Group still became the largest shareholder of Comcast.
The whole process seems easy, but in fact, for this 7.1% stake, Firefly Group has invested more than 2.5 billion US dollars in total within a month or so.
Against the background of the current economic situation in North America and the overall cooling of the NASDAQ stock market crash, many corporate giants are shrinking their businesses to save money, and they can easily spend billions of dollars in cash for acquisitions like Firefly Group There are absolutely very few companies.
Now that the prelude to the merger has been kicked off, the Firefly Group no longer hides its intentions.
Although no longer buying stock, Katzenberg quickly asked Comcast to join its board.
The Roberts family also realized that if they agreed to Katzenberg's request, not only the company's operations would no longer have any secrets in front of the Firefly Group. Moreover, with the strong influence of the Firefly system, Comcast shareholders are likely to gradually fall to the other side as the executives of the Firefly system join the board of directors.
Therefore, Comcast chairman Ralph Roberts immediately rejected Katzenberg's request on the grounds that the board of directors would not be re-elected.
Typically, a listed company will discuss the replacement of board members for the new year at the annual general meeting of shareholders.
Although the shares held by Firefly Group are not enough to hold an extraordinary shareholder meeting, Comcast's annual shareholder meeting is held in January. Unless Ralph Roberts dares to cancel the annual general meeting against the wishes of all Comcast shareholders, otherwise, the other party can only delay for three months at most, and Firefly Group is not too eager.
At the same time, during the game between the two sides, Firefly Group also began to contact AT-T, making a gesture of hoping to acquire AT-T's long-distance communication, giving the outside world a false impression that if the acquisition of Comcast fails, it will switch to long-distance communication .
AT-T naturally hopes that its assets can be sold at a good price, and it also gave a very positive response.
Just like this, you come and go, and the time has entered November at the end of the year without knowing it.
Although he seems to be making frequent moves on the surface, in fact, Eric has given up his expectation of winning Comcast or Telecom in the short term.
The oppressive gestures against Comcast and the approach to AT-T were all designed to delay the progress of the negotiations between the two companies.
The winter of capital in the new technology field has just begun, and the recession of the Internet industry will also affect the field of basic operators. As time goes on, it will only be more and more beneficial to the Firefly Group.
Affected by Eric's thinking, the executives of Firefly Group also put more energy into the acquisition negotiations with Hasbro, and successfully reached a final acquisition agreement with Hasbro in early November.
After negotiations, Firefly Group finally acquired Hasbro Toys wholly-owned with an offer of US$2.86 billion. Hasbro founding family heir Alan Hassenfeld will continue to serve as Hasbro CEO, and Firefly Group will also integrate it with the company's peripheral toy department in the next few months.
On November 1, Eric, Katzenberg and several other high-level executives flew to Providence, the capital of Rhode Island on the east coast.
Rhode Island is a very small coastal state located between Massachusetts and Connecticut, with an area of just over 3,000 square kilometers, separated from Long Island by a bay of 20 to 30 kilometers.
After attending the signing ceremony at Hasbro corporate headquarters, and visiting Hasbro's toy design department and a toy factory in the suburbs of Providence, Katzenberg stayed on to discuss the next integration with Hasbro executives According to the incident, Eric took the helicopter sent by Long Island Airport and flew directly to Martha's Vineyard.
At the same time, New Line Pictures' "Reaper 3" and Universal Pictures' "Bone Puzzle" have been released one after another with the arrival of Halloween, announcing the arrival of the year-end schedule.
With less than 3 weeks to go before the release of "Gravity", the publicity for the final stage of this super blockbuster, which represents the ambition of the Firefly system to open a new era of film screenings, has also become more and more intense. TV trailers, theater posters, and online marketing are all spread out on a large scale with a high-intensity communication frequency like visual bombing.
The world premiere of the film will be held on November 12 at the IMAX theater in Santa Monica, Los Angeles.
Through several internal test screenings, the Firefly Group already has absolute confidence in the film quality of "Gravity". Therefore, the distribution department decided to hold small-scale screening events across North America on the weekends of November 6th and 7th, and November 13th and 14th, in order to accumulate word-of-mouth for the film's release in advance.
Although everything is in full swing, the promotion of "Gravity" this time mainly focuses on the two protagonists Jodie Foster and George Clooney, and highlights the new screening mode of 3D and IMAX. Apart from the world premiere on November 12th, Eric has not arranged other media promotion activities for himself.
After staying in Martha's Vineyard and East Hampton for a few days, Eric arrived in Manhattan.
The IMG and Elite two agency companies that Eric bought in his own name before have completed the initial adjustments, but there are still some things that require him to personally communicate with the heads of the two companies.
IMG's problem is not big, the company has already formed a very complete business operation system.
Although Mark McCormack has stepped down as chairman of the board following the completion of the transaction, CEO Payne Forstmann is a very capable person, enough to lead the IMG Group further.
In addition, Cindy and Linda jointly invested 300 million US dollars in the IMG Group and accounted for 20% of the shares. At this time, they also joined the IMG board of directors. Although the two women were very careful not to intervene in the management of IMG under Eric's instructions, but with them staring at them, it is impossible for the IMG management to move their minds.
The bigger problem is the Elite.
Before the acquisition, Eric proposed that John Casablanca, the founder and president of Elite, could retain the shares of the company, but during the transaction, John Casablanca still chose to cash out his less than 5% of the company's shares. Therefore, Eric holds 100% of the company at this time, and John Casablanca is simply responsible for managing the company as a professional manager.
From the original BBC documentary incident, it is not difficult to see the serious problems in the world's largest modeling agency.
After taking over Elite, Eric disbanded the company's original board of directors immediately, which is equivalent to completely ripping off the supervision of John Casablanca. Except for Eric, the boss, John Casablanca hardly has to be responsible to anyone.
Of course, Eric would not make such an obvious company management mistake.
Due to a series of changes, the positions of Elite European President and other positions that were vacant due to the impact of the BBC documentary incident have not yet been filled.
Although after the acquisition was completed, John Casablanca immediately provided Eric with a list of candidates. However, Eric did not adopt it. Instead, under the recommendation of Cindy and Linda, he selected some fashion industry executives to fill these positions. The two women have been in the industry for so many years, and their familiarity with the industry is no less than that of John Casablanca. The managers they recommend must be much more reliable than John Casablanca.
In addition, Eric also dispatched people from Firefly Group to take over Elite's financial department, and began to sort out Elite's previous financial situation.
It can be said that through a series of personnel adjustments in the past month, Eric has largely gained control of Elite.
Naturally, these steps to deprive John Casablanca of power inevitably made the industry bigwig unhappy.
During this time, Eric has received more than one phone call from John Casablanca complaining that the Finance Department’s audit of Elite’s accounts has affected the company’s operations and so on. Let him take care of it.
Manhattan, Lexington Avenue Armory.
John Casablanca, led by Eric's bodyguards, entered the hall of the arsenal, where a rehearsal for the new Victoria's Secret Fashion Show was in progress.
In the hall, only the lights were on near the runway, and the surroundings seemed a bit dim. Eric sat in a corner, crossed his legs and watched the rehearsal on the stage leisurely, and occasionally chatted with Edward Lazek next to him. A few words.
This year is the sixth edition of the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, and the new millennium is coming soon. This year's Victoria's Secret Fashion Show is quite meaningful. LTD will also officially launch the first sky-high priced fantasy BRA in this big show.
When Eric was still on Long Island, Emily called, hoping that he could come to see the preparations for the big show in person and give some suggestions.
Over the past few years, the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show has formed a very complete process, and Eric doesn't think he has anything to do. Therefore, he just quietly came to sit for a while today. In the arsenal at this time, except for the director of this big show and the accompanying Vice President of LTD Group Edward Razek, no one else knew of his arrival.
Without Eric's influence, it is naturally impossible for the Victoria's Secret production team to gather all the supermodels every time, but to rehearse by theme.
The sub-session theme of today's rehearsal is Dream Wings. The design inspiration mainly comes from butterflies and other Lepidoptera insects, so it can also be said to be a theme with more wings.
The theme opened with Quss Gauff, the girl is one of the five new Victoria's Secret spokespersons.
Due to her childish baby face image, Qusi Gauff also serves as the spokesperson of the Victoria's Secret girl brand PINK. The other four other spokespersons are veterans Tyra Banks and Diane Kruger, and newcomers Gisele Bundchen and Carmen Keith. Alexander had just turned eighteen this year, and Eric was not in a hurry to push the girl into this position.
John Casablanca came to Eric, greeted Eric and Edward Razek respectively, and then sat down on the other side of Eric.
The girls on the runway were rehearsing to the music, Eric didn't speak, and John Casablanca waited quietly. Although he had complained to the young man next to him on the phone before, John Casablanca still felt a natural sense of oppression immediately when he was actually sitting next to Eric.
John Casablanca also participated in the investment in technology stocks in the first half of the year. He was relatively lucky and sold most of his stocks before the stock market crashed. After the Nasdaq crashed, although the technology stocks he held were basically locked up, John Casablanca did not suffer heavy losses like many people, but instead had a surplus.
Due to his attention to the NASDAQ stock market, John Casablanca can easily feel the ubiquitous and powerful influence of the Firefly system on the new technology and media fields. As the head of the economic empire of the Firefly System, although Eric was more than 20 years younger than himself, the enormous power and wealth this young man possessed was absolutely beyond his reach.
After the girls finished their steps and the music fell, Eric said to Edward Razek: "The sixth girl, the one with transparent wings, let her come over later. I'll talk to John for a while."
Edward Razek listened to Eric's instructions with a slight sideways, respectfully agreed, nodded to John Casablanca, and got up to leave.
John Casablanca subconsciously recalled the girl Eric had mentioned.
He couldn't remember the order in which the girls appeared, but when Eric mentioned the transparent wings, John Casablanca roughly thought of a flawless and beautiful face with a slightly glamorous temperament and naturally charming eyes. Victoria's Secret Angel, naturally impeccable figure.
John Casablanca is well aware of every supermodel under Elite, but he has no information about this girl, who obviously belongs to another modeling agency.
Although his performance on the runway just now was obviously a little restrained, but John Casablanca, with his vicious vision in the circle for many years, still recognized the girl's potential at a glance. This is obviously another good seed of a supermodel. Maybe the other party has already emerged in the circle, but I don't know it.
Thinking of this, John Casablanca couldn't help being a little envious. It is estimated that only Eric Williams can casually express "I want her" to these beautiful stunners.
Although he is at the helm of Elite, John Casablanca has few supermodels under his banner. Sometimes, he even has to serve these beautiful beauties as if he were serving his aunt.
Eric waited for Edward Razek to leave, and he didn't explain what he just said. He just suddenly became interested and wanted to build the former "Invincible Twist Hand" in advance.
Glancing at John Casablanca, whose expression changed beside him, Eric first said, "So, John, how are you doing?"
John Casablanca involuntarily turned slightly towards Eric like Edward Razek, and said, "It's not bad, but suddenly I'm a lot busy."
During this period of time, although Eric did not intend to personally intervene in the management of Elite, several high-level executives who were successively inserted into Elite by Eric were not polite at all. They showed obvious aggressiveness as soon as they took office. His power was deprived even more, and John Casablanca, who had begun to slack in these years, had to regain his spirits.
"If you feel powerless, I can find someone to help you," Eric said with a smile on his face, "In this way, Elite resets the CEO, and you will be in charge. I will assign you a president, how about it?"
John Casablanca suddenly complained in his heart. He had just complained a little in disguise, and Eric unceremoniously wanted to weaken his power again.
Shaking his head quickly, John Casablanca said, "It's not necessary, Eric, I think I'm still fine."
"Actually, I understand what you said on the phone during this time," Eric also put away the smile on his face, and said with a serious expression: "However, you should also understand, John, I am the boss of Elite now .I respect what you have done in the modeling agency industry, but that doesn't mean I'm letting Elite go."