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Hollywood Hunter - Chapter 368

Published at 26th of October 2021 09:06:53 AM


Chapter 368: 368

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Same Sunday, Los Angeles.

Michael owitz watched James Leibold's "Today Show" completely at breakfast, and naturally he didn't believe James's ambiguous response at all.

According to the information recently inquired, Denise entertainment is preparing to bid for MCA, which is an indisputable fact.

Originally planned to spend the weekend with his family, because yesterday's Hollywood Reporter suddenly exposed Denise Entertainment's acquisition intention and today's "Today Show" interview, owitz had to continue to work at the weekend.

Since the second half of last year, CAA's team has been busy with the MCA acquisition for a whole year.

If this acquisition fails, not only the whole team's busy work in one year, but also tens of millions of dollars of consulting fee loss, which is not what owitz would like to see.

However, owitz also knows that the problems he faces at this time are very thorny.

In the initial contact with owitz last year, Panasonic indicated that it was willing to offer a price of up to US $90 for the acquisition of MCA, which is equivalent to the total transaction amount of US $9 billion based on the total equity of nearly 100 million shares of MCA.

However, with the continuous deterioration of Japan's economy in the past half year, Panasonic's attitude has become more and more conservative. On the other hand, the outbreak of the Kuwait war triggered a decline in the U.S. stock market. At the close of last Friday, the share price of MCA had fallen to $36, and Panasonic was even less likely to bid $90 a share.

The problem now is to speed up the acquisition and urge Panasonic to further increase its offer to MCA.

Before eight o'clock in the morning, Michael owitz arrived at CAA's headquarters in Century City. Members of MCA's acquisition core team also arrived, along with Matsushita representative keitaniko.

The meeting to discuss various coping strategies lasted all morning, and owitz also spoke on the phone with Matsushita President Akio Gujing of Osaka at noon.

Since taking office as president of Panasonic in 1986, Akio gutai has always hoped to enter the United States, but before last year, he was suppressed by the conservative founder of Matsushita.

However, to owitz's disappointment, Akio Guei did not accept his proposal to raise the offer to $75 per share and complete the transaction as soon as possible. At the same time, he did not give up the acquisition plan because of the competition from danilisi entertainment.

After a busy morning, we finally decided to start a new round of negotiation with MCA next Wednesday to further discuss the details of the acquisition.

After lunch, we saw off keiguchiko, a core member of MCA's acquisition team, Michael owitz, Bob Goldman, CAA's financial director and co-founder, and two other senior executives, sandy Kleiman and ray ketzman, and returned to the meeting room in the morning.

Panasonic's attitude towards the acquisition is not firm enough, which makes everyone a little worried.

As everyone gathered around the conference table and waited for his secretary to deliver coffee, Bob Goldman suddenly said, "a lot of people in Hollywood don't want to see Denise's entertainment expand any more."

"So what? Do you think Warner, fox, MGM and Columbia will jump out and oppose this acquisition now?" said sandy kliman, who helped owitz start the agency business of CAA enterprises?

In this summer program, "sleeping with the enemy" and "shaking the cradle's hand" in Denise Entertainment's 10 film plans have all achieved success. Not only Fox and Disney have benefited from them, but also Warner, MGM, Columbia and other companies have close cooperation with Denise entertainment.

Ray ketzman said at this time: "and paramount," rocket expert "and" Firebird attack "two project failures, Martin Davis must be very dissatisfied with westero."

"It's just that the paramount family isn't enough," Sandy kliman said

Bob Goldman then said, "you've made a mistake. It's not necessarily the same industry that can prevent a studio from being merged. I mean, the three major unions in Hollywood."

Bob Goldman's voice dropped, and the other three people in the conference room all looked suddenly.

Danielis entertainment had a quarrel with the American writers' Union two years ago because of the strike. Now Simon westero has been suppressing stars' remuneration through long-term contracts and strictly controlling film production costs on budget. Although these are beneficial to the development of the studio, they have obviously damaged the interests of the Hollywood writers' Union, the directors' Union and the actors' Union.

What's more, for two consecutive years, Denise entertainment has accounted for the majority of the top ten box office places in the United States. If it merges MCA again, it will obviously become a monopoly.

If the three major trade unions make efforts to file a lawsuit against the Federal Department of justice at the same time, together with the cooperation of Hollywood studios such as paramount, they want to prevent the acquisition of danielis entertainment, it should be very likely.

"I remember last Wednesday's bill of Texas Republican Senator Peter Bridger," ray ketzman quickly mentioned another thing. Seeing the other three people's eyes confused, he said, "I'll ask someone to collect a piece of information for you. In a word, the White House should not like westero now. In this case, the justice department may not easily pass it Danielis Entertainment's application for MCA. ""And last year's Dustin, cruise and others."

"Matthew Broderick, do you remember that young man?"

“……”

“……”

After more than ten minutes of discussion, Michael owitz quickly made a decision and said, "Bob, you are familiar with Martin Davis. Please make an appointment with him as soon as possible. Sandy and ray, you two are responsible for connecting with Washington. I will personally communicate with the three trade unions and Dustin."

To finalize these, the four soon began to act separately.

The weekend passed in a flash.

Monday, September 10.

Following the Hollywood Reporter's exposure on Saturday that Denise entertainment intends to acquire MCA, the Wall Street Journal also exposed the progress of MCA's acquisition on Monday, saying categorically that Panasonic's acquisition team will start formal negotiations with MCA on Wednesday.

After the Wall Street Journal news came to light, Michael owitz called Lou wassalman's home, accusing him of leaking the news and threatening to cancel Wednesday's agenda. Lu wassalman firmly denied owitz's accusation. After several disputes, the meeting on Wednesday will be held as usual.

However, after continuous media reports, Denise entertainment and Panasonic may bid for MCA news, is completely on the table.

On Monday morning, as the North American stock market opened, MCA's share price began to rise rapidly.

After one day's trading, by the end of the afternoon, MCA's share price had skyrocketed from $36.75 at the opening to $41.25, up 12%. By the end of Wednesday, MCA's share price had risen to $46.75, basically back to the level before the outbreak of the Kuwait war.

Because of the time difference between the east coast and the west coast, the east coast stock market closed when the top management of Panasonic and MCA concluded their negotiation on Wednesday.

What's more, there are some signs of a sharp turn for the worse.

At the press conference after the talks, MCA president Sid schinberg said frankly that Matsushita's offer was not sincere. MCA's recent share price was seriously undervalued due to force majeure. If Matsushita refuses to raise its offer, the transaction between the two sides may be stranded.

At the same time, Sid schinberg also said at the press conference that MCA is a very excellent company, and he is very looking forward to other companies interested in this company.

The purpose of this last remark can not be more obvious.

The media then continued to expose more specific details of the talks.

MCA chairman Sid schinberg expected a price of $80 per share, but Matsushita was only willing to offer a price of $60 per share. There was a huge gap between the two sides, so the talks broke up unhappily.

Because of the failure of this meeting, the rise of MCA stock slowed down significantly the next day.

Although it is clear that Matsushita can not give up the acquisition so easily, and MCA will not easily drive off Matsushita, a competitor who can push up its share price, many people still turn their eyes to danilisi entertainment, looking forward to Simon's move.

Simon stayed in New York this week, despite the media attention in the first week of the Forbes rich list.

When the news came that Panasonic and MCA were apparently deadlocked after their first public meeting, Simon completely put down his mind and waited patiently for the right time. During this time, Janet helped him choose and arrange one after another activities such as dinner, party and so on.

It can't do without a corresponding network, and it's not a wise move to leave the network to the top management of the company.

Every time Simon goes to Melbourne, Johnston's family arranges similar activities for Simon to participate in. Janet completely inherits the family's vision and skills in networking. Women can help Simon avoid many useless social activities just by instinct. They don't need to blindly grope around in various circles like many new rich people.

To further confuse the media and the public, Simon also took part in a party hosted by Steve Ross at his home in East Hampton, long island.

Then came the news that Denise entertainment might seek to merge with Time Warner.

Everyone in the circle knows that Steve Ross is a man with a strong desire for power, and Simon will not let go of the control of danielis entertainment, so the possibility of a merger between the two companies is very low. However, there are more people in the world who never know the truth.

After the news, Time Warner's share price also began to rise.

Neither Denise entertainment nor Time Warner have clarified this. Simon's purpose is to confuse the public. Ross hopes that time warner will have some good news, even if it is false, which will relieve the pressure on the leader of Time Warner.

After the completion of the Time Warner merger at the beginning of this year, due to the internal management struggle, the deterioration of the external economic situation, and the sharp increase in corporate debt, the expected synergy effect of one plus one greater than two before the merger of Time Warner and Warner Bros. did not appear, and the stock price of Time Warner fell all the way.At present, Time Warner, a media giant with total assets of nearly 25 billion US dollars, has only a market value of more than 8 billion US dollars, but its liabilities exceed 10 billion US dollars. Compared with before the merger, when paramount tried to cut off the acquisition, it only offered time $10.7 billion.

In recent months, some media have compared the Time Warner merger with the Reynolds nabesk merger the year before.

Frankly speaking, because the internal situation of Time Warner is so complicated, even if Steve Ross is willing to sell the company, Simon will not sell it easily.

Two weeks later, Simon left New York again on September 17 and flew to San Francisco on the west coast.

A few days ago, in order to maintain Larry Ellison's control over Oracle, he once again won a total board seat of the company, and let Carol Bartz, who is in charge of igritte's software business, take the post. Simon is not aimless.

Database software is widely used on Internet sites. If Carol Bartz is appointed as Oracle director, the cooperation between Oracle database software and igritte's World Wide Web technology can be further strengthened.

On the other hand, Oracle's upcoming layoffs are mainly concentrated in the software sales department. Just as it happens, Carol Bartz is building igritte's software sales network. This time, she can find a group of available sales staff from Oracle.

In the past two years, Oracle has made great mistakes in its sales strategy, but there is no doubt about its rapid growth in performance, which is largely due to the credit of Oracle's sales team.

In addition, inspired by Simon's explanation of the concept of "cloud computing" in the memorandum left by igreat, Carol Bartz hopes to build igreat's software department into a one-stop Internet site technical support company based on the world wide web technology, and provide users who want to build websites with a full set of solutions involving software and hardware, rather than just software Is simply to sell related software products.

Different from the original time and space, igritte almost monopolized the world wide web related technology patents at this time.

Although Simon keeps an open attitude as much as possible, considering the explosive growth of Web sites based on the world wide web technology in the next few years, just thinking about it, Simon realizes how huge benefits Carol Bartz's idea will mean if it is realized.

What's more, this is definitely not what igritte can accomplish. It must combine all the new technology enterprise resources of Westeros.

Of course, this plan can not be achieved overnight.

Simon arrived in San Francisco to listen to Carol Bartz's business plan and mediate the dispute between Carol Bartz and Jeff Bezos again.

The last time Simon injected $50 million into igritte, he allocated most of the $35 million to the network department. Carol Bartz thinks that his software department is the most important one at this stage and should get more funds. Therefore, after Simon left last time, he "argued with Jeff Bezos" to share the money equally.

Carol Bartz and Jeff Bezos are both very strong personalities. In the past few months, they have unconsciously even marginalized Tim Berners Lee, the CEO, to the position of CTO.

Tim Berners Lee is a tech nerd who is similar to Steve Wozniak, the founder of apple. Finding that he really can't manage his two nominally subordinates, he simply doesn't participate in the dispute between them and concentrates on the research and development of a series of World Wide Web technology projects he is responsible for.




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