Chapter 831： Disney crisis

In the past January, the theme of the world film industry was called "Avatar", but in February, this theme remained unchanged. The North American box office of "Avatar" officially passed the threshold of 700 million U.S. dollars, and the global box office exceeded 2.5 billion U.S. dollars. Mark!

Although the film's daily box office numbers from all over the world have dropped to more than 10 million U.S. dollars, it is still advancing steadily. Some optimistic institutions predict that the final box office of "Avatar" will approach or exceed the terrible figure of 3 billion U.S. dollars.

At the Golden Globe Awards held in January, "Avatar" was also the biggest winner, winning two awards for best director and best feature film.

This is related to Disney’s operational planning. Last month was a critical moment to promote the box office of "Avatar". Disney used all the means available to promote the film, even with the permission of James Cameron. , And hyped up the five marriages of truck drivers one by one...

As for the weather vane issue, in fact, everyone knows that there is a huge gap between the Golden Globes and the Oscars, and the two are not particularly connected. Under all favorable conditions, the possibility of "The Hurt Locker" is also very small.

On February 2, the 82nd Academy Awards nominees luncheon was held at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. "Avatar" and "The Hurt Locker" became the biggest nominees.

The former won nine nominations including best picture, best director, best editing, best photography, best visual effects, best artistic director and best original soundtrack.

The latter also received nine nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Photography, Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay and Best Sound Effects.

The two films are destined to fight at the Oscars.

After "Avatar" got on the right track at the box office, Ryan's attention shifted. George Lucas seemed to really plan to retire. After Disney’s negotiating team secretly contacted Lucasfilm for a while, The two parties have entered a substantial negotiation stage and have begun a long-term price seesaw.

In general. It went smoother than Ryan expected.

Viacom and Time Warner are busy with their internal affairs and have no intention of intervening. Universal and Conscat are also very calm. News Corp., which is most worried, does not seem to have changed much.

If all goes on like this, Lucasfilm will definitely become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Walt Disney. The current obstacle is nothing more than a price issue.

The market value of Lucasfilm is now a little over US$3.3 billion. If Disney wants to complete this good-faith acquisition, it must take a premium. In the first round of formal negotiations, Disney quoted a total purchase price of US$3.515 billion. , But was rejected by the management headed by George Lucas.

Ryan didn't mean to contact George Lucas privately. This kind of transaction involving billions of dollars hardly played any role in favors.

The negotiations are still in the confidential stage. At the end of January, Disney submitted a second $3.65 billion offer to Lucasfilm, which was rejected again.

After the Oscar nomination was announced, Walt Disney held a board of directors for this purpose to discuss the next offer.

"Lucas Pictures is the active party." Robert Iger said, "If it weren't for the financial crisis that caused major groups and banks to shrink their money, they would not lack the next home. Now, even though George Lucas is showing a sale It means, but if they can’t sell it, they can continue to operate.”

"We can raise the offer again."

Another executive director said. He is Crete Disney, the son of Roy Disney, after Roy Disney's death. Became the only representative of the Disney family in Walt Disney.

However, his reputation and ability are far from Roy Disney, and he is notoriously low-eyed.

"My psychological bottom line is $4 billion." Ryan said slowly.

Lucasfilm is totally worth the price. Unlike other companies, Lucasfilm has no debt of one cent, and Disney does not have to worry about debts and bad debts after the acquisition.

The high-quality resources that can be acquired in this way are hardly found in Hollywood.

"Robert, the specific pricing..."

Suddenly someone knocked on the door of the conference room, and a secretary went over to open the door. George walked quickly towards Ryan.

Many people, including Nicole, looked over strangely. They all knew George, the special assistant to the chairman. This is a calm and even silent person with a certain degree of decision-making power in his hands. If it is not a particularly important event, will you never break into the board of directors?

what happened?

Seeing the encrypted phone that George handed over, Ryan put it in his ear, but after hearing a few words, his brows wrinkled unconsciously, and his blue eyes narrowed into a line.

After hanging up the phone, Ryan looked at the other directors who focused their attention on him, breathed out slowly, and still calmly said, "The topic we are discussing will be forced to interrupt."

"What happened?" Nicole asked.

"I just received the news." Ryan stood up and walked a few steps, and then said, "The Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Bureau of the Department of Justice have received complaints from several companies at the same time. The business has launched an antitrust investigation, and their representatives will soon appear in Burbank."

The venue was silent for a moment. If it was replaced by any commercial group company, anti-monopoly investigations were very troublesome.

"Robert..." Ryan looked at the CEO. "The negotiations with Lucasfilm will be handed over to you for the time being."

"no problem."

After the other party nodded, Ryan continued, "Next we will discuss how to deal with this antitrust investigation."

Strictly speaking, Disney does have an absolute advantage in online video and animated films. It seems normal to be complained about monopoly, but Ryan always feels that things will not be that simple. Robert Iger and Cook Dick also agree with him. the opinion of.

In particular, the timing of the antitrust investigation is too sensitive. If the scale of the investigation is expanded, it will completely disrupt the pace of Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm.

Regardless of whether Disney's commercial activities constitute a monopoly, since someone has promoted this antitrust investigation, it must be dealt with seriously.

As the largest and most developed economy in the world, the anti-monopoly system and practice in the United States has undergone more than 100 years of evolution and improvement, and has always maintained a certain degree of crackdown on monopoly behavior, and the crackdown method is also consistent with the changes in economic and social conditions. The pace has formed a dynamic coexistence of monopoly and competition.

Since the 1990s, with the increasingly fierce international competition for technological innovation, the goal of the federal government’s anti-monopoly is no longer to simply prevent market monopoly and price manipulation, but to focus on how to prevent technological monopoly outside of patent protection, just like targeting Microsoft and Apple's antitrust investigations are the same to strictly prevent the emergence of knowledge-based online oligopoly.

Especially after the Obama administration came to power, it changed the Bush administration’s tolerance policy towards large companies’ monopolistic behavior and returned to the Clinton administration to implement strong anti-monopoly based on the goal of encouraging innovation and technological change. Large companies want to get involved in anti-monopoly lawsuits in the United States. Getting out is not easy.

According to the Federal Anti-Monopoly Law, once a company is found to be suspected of a monopoly, it may face various penalties such as fines, imprisonment, compensation, civil sanctions, forced dissolution, and splitting. The Ministry of Justice can directly initiate civil and criminal actions against companies suspected of monopoly litigation.

The Federal Trade Commission can also directly make a ruling or file a civil lawsuit. In addition, damaged companies or ordinary consumers can also directly file a civil lawsuit against a company suspected of a monopoly and demand three times the damages.

In short, antitrust investigations are very troublesome for a company.

If large companies want to get rid of antitrust investigations, the usual method is to pay huge fines to "spend money to eliminate disasters", which has almost become an international practice.

But Ryan realized that this antitrust investigation might not be that simple, and Disney could not say it would be dragged into a long-term investigation quagmire like the Microsoft lawsuit.

As he had guessed, just after noon, the authoritative financial media of News Corporation, the "Wall Street Journal", disclosed the news on its official website, saying that the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Bureau of the Department of Justice will investigate whether Disney Abusing its dominant advantage in the Internet market, unfairly transferring Internet users to Disney’s growing service network, and suppressing its competitors.

As soon as the news came out, Walt Disney's share price fell. By the end of the afternoon, the single share price fell by nearly 3%!

On the second day, representatives of the Federal Trade Commission arrived in Burbank first, and the gossip website of the New York Post under News Corporation immediately posted pictures of antitrust representatives walking into the Walt Disney headquarters. The news that Disney is about to accept an antitrust investigation.

Disney's stock price continued to decline. In just two days, Disney lost 4% of its market value ~ www.novelhall.com ~ a total of 3.5 billion US dollars!

Denial is definitely not a wise choice. Disney simply posted on the blog that the Federal Trade Commission has launched an investigation into the company's business, but Disney stated that it "does not know what the committee is specifically concerned about."

"This will be the biggest crisis Walt Disney has faced since its establishment 90 years ago!"

"If anti-monopoly is established, Disney may face a astronomical fine of more than three billion U.S. dollars!"

"The Ministry of Justice may file a formal antitrust lawsuit against Disney, and Disney will be split into two parts, film and television entertainment and online media!"

In just three days, from the North American Fox Television Network and the "Wall Street Journal" to the British Sky Television and the "Times", all of them were frantically reporting on Disney's antitrust incidents, and even some media from other media groups joined in. To it.

After all, if Disney is really split, other media groups will lose one strong competitor. Even if it cannot be split, it is in their interest to take the opportunity to weaken Disney. (To be continued)

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