Chapter 583： Mutual exchange

Chapter 583

Before Christmas, exactly before December 20, North America’s two-week legal holiday, Eric only left East Hampton once, mainly to participate in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction in New York. The premiere. Oh,

As Quentin established his position as a director of Hollywood's ghosts, the "Pulp Fiction" preview stage has already caused a one-sided praise in the North American film critic community. After the release, it has caused a strong reaction among fans.

Although the Firefly Films only gave the film's 1300 premiere screens because of the limitations of the "Pulp Fiction", the "Pulp Fiction" box office was close to $17 million in the first week, with a single box office of more than $13,000. It easily broke through the single-store 10,000-dollar movie standard, even surpassing the comedy movies that other movie companies mainly promoted in Christmas. After the nomination of the American Film and Television Golden Globe Awards in December, the second week of the "Pulp Fiction", which was nominated for six Golden Globe Awards, did not fall, reaching $21 million. and

Because of the series of "Pulp Fiction" starring Bruce Willis, John Travolta and other Hollywood superstars, the cost of "Pulp Fiction" is not enough for the famous fame created by Quentin's "Water Dog". Up to 10 million US dollars, although Firefly has invested more than 10 million US dollars in the promotion of "Pulp Fiction" as a popular film in the award season, the two-week box office score of "Pulp Fiction" has enabled the fireflies to recover the full cost. Partially profitable.

The "Night Vampire" released a week after "Pulp Fiction" also achieved a brilliant box office score. The box office results of more than $47 million in the first week proved once again that Tom Cruise's box office appeal is still good.

However, after the release of "Vampires at Night". Amy Pascal, who had been negotiating with Cruise for the actor in "Mission Impossible", unfortunately called East Hampton. Said Tom Cruise finally refused to cooperate with the flower studio. I was personally recruited by eo Shirley Lansing, who had just taken office in Paramount Pictures, and once again went to the old club Paramount with the Cruz-Wagner production company.

Because of the Hollywood tough movie trend led by Stallone and Schwarzenegger in the 1980s, Hollywood may lack other types of stars in the 1990s, but there is no shortage of action stars. Eric is free to think of a series of candidates who are now equal to Cruise and very suitable for the actor in the Mission Impossible, Kevin Costner, Liam Neeson, Nicholas Cage, Keanu. Weiss and so on. Therefore, Eric did not have much emotion for Cruise's refusal. He just told Amy Pascal to contact other stars. Eric was only curious. It is the strength of the violent old man of Lei Shidong. This time, the two sides can cooperate for several years. Moreover, there is no "Ship Impossible" which makes Paramount want to stop the ace series. Once Cruise and Paramount are again in trouble, Eric is also very curious about whether Cruise can make a comeback.

Of course, this curiosity was quickly thrown away by Eric. While enjoying the Christmas and the warmth of the Christmas with women and children, all kinds of news came from Los Angeles without interruption.

Warren Buffett stayed in Los Angeles until December 27th, during which he negotiated with Kasenberg, and the two sides still did not reach any agreement. Although Buffett made some concessions, the conditions for the opening are still difficult to accept. On December 27th, Eric also specially talked with Buffett in Los Angeles for two hours by phone in East Hampton. Buffett still insisted on replacing 70% of the shares of Ab and Firefly. However, the proportion of equity that fireflies need to pay has been reduced to 40%. According to the market value of ab TV network at this time, it is equivalent to exchange of 7 billion US dollars for 40% of the firefly film industry. Eric is certainly not acceptable, and neither party has any After talking about it again, Buffett returned to Omaha on the same day, and Firefly Films began to formally prepare for the public acquisition.

Just after the New Year holiday, Chris, who had prepared for several months, officially took the shares of the company in his hands and asked to enter the board of directors of the company, and publicly launched the acquisition to the company with Brighton Fashion.

Although the eo Leslie Wesnay of the ltd had realized the abnormality of the stock price of the company before, but Chris was very careful throughout the process, until the news was made public, Leslie Wesnay realized things. The seriousness, at this time Chris has already owned 12% of the shares of the company, and unwittingly has become the second largest shareholder outside Lesley Wesnay, although away from Leslie Weschenes 35% of the shares still have a long way to go, but Leslie Weschenai knows very well that once Chris enters the board of directors smoothly and wins other shareholders to join his camp, Leslie Wexner is likely Will lose control of the company.

Therefore, Leslie Wexner immediately launched a poison pill program, publicly claiming that if Chris’s shareholding amount exceeds 15%, Ltd will issue additional shares to major shareholders at a price far below the public share price. Diluting the shares in Chris's hands.

Chris, who had been prepared, made a counterattack for the first time. Brighton’s lawyers’ representatives said at the press conference that Leslie Weskerney’s actions undermined the majority of shareholders’ freedom to make or sell shares of the company. And it is the 'barbaric plunder' of other shareholders who cannot accept low-cost issuance, and therefore requires federal regulators to stop the management of the company.

Leslie Weschenai, while denying Brighton Fashion and the malicious acquisition of fireflies, said that in order to express the legitimacy of his actions to the public, he decided to hold an extraordinary shareholders meeting at the headquarters of the company on January 20 to let the shareholders represent freedom. Vote whether to start the poison pill program.

But then, Brighton Fashion and Firefly Investment published in the famous financial magazine Business Weekly the company's detailed development plan after the completion of the acquisition of the company, indicating that its acquisition is a normal commercial merger, not a hostile takeover.

After Chris Xiang submitted a series of materials prepared in advance. Before the Shenzhen Extra Shareholders' Meeting. Color announced that the 'poison pill plan' of the company even voted through the extraordinary general meeting. Will also be invalidated.

Subsequently, Chris, as a joint representative of Brighton Fashion and Firefly Investment, first proposed to the company a purchase price of $19 per share, and announced the Brighton Fashion Company’s annual financial report last year, announced A series of financing plans for acquisitions.

Leslie Wesnay simply reported a high price of $35 per share, more than double the price of the company. The offer was released and Leslie Wesnay was immediately taken over. Business magazines rated 'loss of reason'.

For a time. Both the acquisition and the acquired parties are coming and going, and it is a good show.

Although the business has not been too big under the tide of mergers and acquisitions in the last two years, since the junk bond king Michael Milken was jailed and corporate sniper Ron Perelman put away the low-key man, this It’s still the first big-selling leveraged buyout on Wall Street in recent times, because it’s not clear how many chips there are in the private investment of Firefly and Brighton, and some even compare it to the Revlon acquisition. A few years ago, Ron Perelman swallowed $1 billion in Revlon with 150 million dollars.

In line with the Firefly Films program, Eric chose to attend the Golden Globe Awards Ceremony this year, so he returned to Los Angeles in mid-January. Like many people, Eric is always watching Chris and Leslie Wexnay for a series of moves you have come to. Although it is a layman, Eric is also very aware that Leslie Wexner has fallen behind.

However, the Firefly Films industry is also preparing for the public acquisition of Ab, and Eric has not much thought to ponder these things.

After the end of the New Year holiday, Firefly Films released the company's 1994 film list for the first time. In addition to the main films such as "Save the Great Ryan", "The Lion King", "The Real Lie", etc., it also includes the new line label. The restart of some of its classic horror movies. At the same time, the TV drama department of Firefly Films officially announced that after the fifth season of "Friends", Firefly Films will cancel the contract with Fox TV. After continuing to produce "Friends" colleagues, the Firefly TV drama department will develop several other TV series. And a reality show to 'expand its own TV network business'.

Although there is no public smashing of the window paper, at this time, people who pay a little attention to the news in North America know that it is only a matter of time before Firefly Pictures launched a public acquisition to Ab.

After the firefly film industry released the 1994 film list, in early February, the latest issue of "variety" magazine was published, immediately announced that it was out of stock, the magazine had to urgently print 100,000 magazines for emergency.

This is just a movie magazine that is of interest to Hollywood professionals. The reason why the movie magazine suddenly went out of stock is because Firefly Pictures has publicly released the 1993 financial report of Firefly Film in the magazine Variety.

Throughout 1993, Firefly Pictures released a total of 28 films, with an average of more than two per month. The Firefly Films has finally won a $447 million box office in North America this year, and the "World of Earth Clash", "Bug Crisis" and the "Detective Aircraft Head 2" and "The End of the Year" Films such as Pulp Fiction and Night Vampire have been successful at the box office, once again winning 29% of the box office share. The annual North American box office is expected to reach $1.74 billion, and the entire North American 1993 is due to the Jurassic period. The thrill of the Park’s heavy 'event movie', the box office broke through $6 billion for the first time.

Because of the strong locomotive effect caused by the success of films such as Jurassic Park, Firefly’s net profit in 1993 reached a record high of 1.19 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 200 million U.S. dollars compared with last year, and compared to last year’s fireflies. Net profit is only a slight advantage of Time Warner's $30 million. Last year, due to the huge impact of the death of Steve Ross, who had been in power for decades, Time Warner Group's net profit did not rise and fall, only 870 million US dollars. Firefly's film industry is fully profitable beyond Time Warner's $320 million.

After the time Warner, Universal, Paramount, Fox, Columbia and MGM have a total profit of less than 2 billion US dollars, because of the toss of Peter Cooper, although the end of the year with the fireflies Arrow's box office is good, but other films in Colombia are rarely profitable. Sony Colombia is still losing money overall. Although MGM Studios has recovered some vitality under the leadership of John Kali and others, it is still not as good as some prosperous two. The third-line film company, MGM's 1993 film production and distribution is less than a fraction of the firefly film industry.

While the entire capital market was studying the annual financial report of Firefly Films in 1993, Firefly Films officially publicly submitted the acquisition application to the ab TV network board in early February, compared with the acquisition of CI by Chris. Confrontation, the reaction of ab will be much milder.

It seems that in order to respond to the Firefly Films' disclosure of the 1993 financial report, Ab TV Network also publicized the 1993 network's profit in advance.

Although it is not comparable to the huge profits of Firefly Films totaling 1.19 billion US dollars, ab TV network also achieved a net profit of 520 million US dollars in 1993, ranking first among the four major TV networks in North America, occupying a market share of %. It should be noted that although there are only four national public television networks in North America, since the emergence of cable TV in the 1980s, a large number of paid cable TV programs have joined the prime time of viewing competition, and the market share of several major TV networks has continued to decline. , ab TV network can achieve a% of the market share, has more than nb, bs and Fox TV network.

After the firefly film industry publicly released the tender offer, ab TV network also quickly responded, ab TV network board bamboo seat and eo Tom Murphy personally called Eric, said if Eric intends to cash If you buy ab TV network by means of stocks, then, based on the stock price of ab TV network at this time, Firefly Pictures must first bear the 35% capital gains tax generated by cash transactions, that is, the firefly film industry. The cash purchase should not be lower than 1.35 times of the stock price of ab TV.

After this period of stock prices continued to rise, ab TV network's share price has reached a new high, the market value reached an astonishing 11.2 billion US dollars, more than nearly two billion dollars higher than in the middle of last year. However, Eric also knew that this was inevitable, so he agreed on the spot. At the moment, the most important thing, of course, is to acquire ab as soon as possible. If this acquisition becomes a long-term saw, then Eric I would rather give up the ab transfer target. (To be continued.)