Hollywood Hunter

Just after everyone had dinner, Brandon Johnston couldn't wait to leave Dumei Point Estate.

Janet has helped him contact a party in Hollywood.

Moreover, despite being a fan of the "Batman" series, Brandon is not a fan of Simon, and staying with this little uncle is obviously uncomfortable.

Obviously, because of the same age of the two, Brandon should receive a lot of chatter like'others' XXX' in private.

The three mothers and daughters of Betty Johnston did not go out, and was visited by Janet in the Shell Villa.

Simon and Anthony stayed in the living room on the ground floor of the villa to discuss the business.

"Probably after seeing the rapid growth of the Internet industry in North America, Telstra made some concessions and was willing to reduce the shareholding ratio of the joint venture company to 30%. At home, my father said that we would take 20% of the shares. If you want, 50% of the shares can be allocated."

Since last year, Simon has been preparing to enter the Australian telecommunications market, including legal lobbying of restrictions on Australia's related telecommunications industry and cooperation with Australian local telecommunications companies.

Before the 1990s, the Australian telecommunications industry had been controlled by state-owned enterprises.

Australia’s largest Australian telecommunications company is very similar to the US AT-T before 1984. This company has almost monopolized Australia’s fixed telephone, cable TV and mobile communications industries.Some other second- and third-tier telecommunications companies are basically state-owned enterprises.

Because of the huge benefits involved in the telecommunications industry, capital forces have been lobbying the Australian government to open up the telecommunications industry to private individuals over the years.

With the joint efforts of all parties, in January this year, the Australian government finally lifted the regulatory ban on the telecommunications industry, allowing private investors to participate in Australia's domestic telecommunications investment.The Westeros system was therefore able to start its own layout.

Simon’s planned telecommunications business in Australia is mainly mobile communications and Internet access services, while also cooperating with Igrid’s portal business.

The fastest way to start an ISP business is to choose to cooperate with local operators like AOL.

The Australian telecommunications company that monopolizes the entire Telstra network is basically the only option.

Telstra is well aware of its advantages, and has not made any mistakes in the cooperation between the three Bell Atlantics and AOL, insisting on obtaining a 50% stake in Astra, which is similar to AOL, registered by Westeros in Australia.

In recent months, the Johnston family, which has confirmed its stake in Australia Online, has been negotiating with Telstra.

Simon has actually learned in advance what Anthony just said and has considered it. At this time, he said: "I thought, since this is the case, we will simply set aside Australia Telecom. Whether it is Internet access services or mobile communications, it still has It is an emerging industry at the initial stage of development. Even if you are cooperating with a company such as Australia Telecom, you will still have to face the trouble of upgrading the basic equipment. In this regard, the initiative is in the hands of Australia Telecom.

Because of the signing of an exclusive agreement, it is impossible to take a slice of the cake in the emerging Internet field. During this period, Bell Pacific and NYNEX's cooperation with AOL became more and more negative, which greatly restricted AOL in the two companies. The expansion of the area.

Simon is not planning to cooperate with Australian Telecommunications again, and this is largely the reason.

Because of the negative constraints of Bell Atlantic and NYNEX, AOL has now had to start building its own line network in the service areas of Bell Pacific and NYNEX.

Simon doesn't care about the 30% shareholding that Australia Telecom insists on. He just doesn't want to suffer from the similar constraints of AOL in front of Bell Pacific and NYNEX.

Parasitic on the network of another company,

Moreover, even if it cooperates with Australia Telecom, it is impossible to start a business in Australia at a time. It must still carry out trial operations in a certain area and then continue to expand.

In this case, the advantages of cooperation with Australia Telecom are not so obvious.

After all, with Bell Atlantic and AOL, Westeros does not lack support in corporate operations and technical teams.

What needs to be invested is only the investment of the basic operation network.

If the service is only carried out in a certain area, such as Melbourne, or a state of Victoria, the cost of this aspect will not be too large.

Setting up the network by yourself can also fully obtain the initiative.

"Actually, Dad meant the same," Anthony heard Simon say, and nodded: "However, even if I don't plan to cooperate with Telstra, I think this company still needs to let out part of the shares, which will make the company's next step in Australia. Development reduces a lot of resistance. After all, our family’s influence is mainly in the area of ​​mining resources."

Simon nodded and shook his head, saying: "In the next one or two years, only our two joint ventures will be temporarily. After the situation opens, we will give some shares through financing. In addition, since we do not plan to cooperate with Australian Telecom, the Internet There is no need to set up two companies in both service and mobile communications, you can directly set up a Bell Atlantic Australia branch. Oh, yes, I am planning to rename Bell Atlantic (Verizon Telecom) recently. Call it VerizonAU."

AU is the abbreviation of Australia (Australia).

The reason is VerizonAU instead, mainly because Simon holds 100% of Bell Atlantic's shares and only holds 75% of AOL.

Although AOL will still participate, this time it will be dominated by Bell Atlantic, whose name will be renamed.

Anthony Johnston also has no comment on this.

The two went on to discuss some details. Anthony finally decided to end the MGM event and went to meet Bellmond Headquarters at Bell Atlantic on the east coast in person.

After discussing this matter, the two talked about MGM again.

"For $300 million, I bought a 30% stake in MGM. Although my father agreed, he was a bit reluctant in his heart. He was not very optimistic about this company," Anthony said with a smile: "So, take It’s up to you to come down. If you really lose, the old man will lose his temper."

The Johnston family previously bought the Australian Seventh Television Network, which is definitely a good investment with very good prospects. In addition, it can be involved in the media field, so the 800 million US dollars spent very willingly.

The acquisition of MGM shares is basically just to match Simon's ambitions in Hollywood.

MGM is a mess, this matter is well known.

This company wants to restore its vitality, it is not something that can be done in a year or two.

Simon also smiled and said: "The war in the Gulf ended, coupled with the turmoil in Europe in recent years, will certainly promote the influx of capital from all over the world into the United States. The improvement of the federal economic situation is inevitable. Even MGM’s The operating conditions are still not good. These shares are held for several years and can be sold to get good returns. Many large companies in Japan and Europe are staring at the big Hollywood studios."

Anthony smiled and said, "Or talk about your specific plan for MGM?"

"My general plan is to first tap the potential of MGM's film library. In these years, Disney has released classic animated movie videos such as the founder Walt Disney Times "Cinderella", "Pinocchio", "Sleeping Beauty" and so on. Each of them has achieved very good success. Among them, "Cinderella" sold 6 million boxes in just one year of release, generating $180 million in revenue. This is a 1950 work. Although MGM does not use animation The movie is good, but the potential is actually greater. You know, MGM's Golden Age, "Gone with the Wind", "The Wizard of Oz", "Song in the Rain", "Northwest North", "Bin Xu" and many other excellent films, Even decades later, it’s a classic. It’s just that Daenerys Entertainment now owns the largest video chain in North America, such as Blockbuster. We can release this batch of classic movies in a similar way to Disney. Videotape."

Anthony said: "I remember Turner Broadcasting took a lot of MGM's movie copyrights during that acquisition a few years ago?"

Simon nodded and explained: "It's just the TV broadcasting rights of some of the films. And, at that time, Turner Broadcasting's approach was not glorious, and the contract was not strict enough. Now that I have control of MGM, I will let Xue Li Lansing reconnected with Ted Turner."

"Okay, so what about next?"

Simon laughed: "Then followed by the development of some peripheral products and copyright operations in image licensing. Daenerys Entertainment is planning to establish a third Universal Studios in Japan. However, compared with Disney’s Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and For the animated images such as the Princess series, Universal Studios is lacking in the accumulation of classic film and television characters. In this regard, MGM can provide a lot of support for Daenerys Entertainment, such as "Cat and Mouse" and "The Wizard of Oz" Classic characters, and many other things. "Batman: Moments of War" only sold 2 billion in derivative income in the past year. MGM has so much accumulation, and with the release of video tapes of classic films, it can also be developed with a lot of Peripheral products."

Anthony nodded again.

Simon waited for Anthony to ask questions before continuing: "Of course, it's still the movie business in the end. This year's two main titles, "Few Good People" in July and "007's Golden Eye" at the end of the year, I am very optimistic. In the future, I will also cooperate with MGM on other projects. Speaking of which, MGM's background is actually very deep. The reason why it fell here is mainly because this company was regarded as a real estate company and The capital operation tool is in use. If Kirk Kokrian patiently operates the film business, the situation of this company will definitely not be as bad as it is now."

The MGM in memory, even though it was still broken throughout the 1990s, when it was acquired by Sony in 2005, the transaction price was still close to $5 billion.

Therefore, as long as MGM no longer encounters some failures similar to "gate of heaven" in the early 1980s, the company's prospects will not be too bad.

Now with Simon, the chance of this happening will naturally be minimized.

The Anthony family did not stay at Dumei Point Estate, but lived in the original villa of Simon and Janet on the west side of the estate.

Simon and Anthony have been discussing till ten o'clock in the middle of the night. Betty Johnston hugged his little daughter Chloe, who had fallen asleep, to remind the two people to end the conversation.

As usual, I got up early the next day.

After the four girls from ABCD arrived, Simon no longer needed to prepare breakfast in person.

At six o'clock, Simon was jogging on the treadmill in the gym, and C girl Claire came in, holding two boxes in her hand.

"Early, boss."

"early."

Simon greeted him, gestured at the box in the girl's hand, and asked, "Done?"

Claire nodded and saw that Simon did not mean to stop running, so he came to the treadmill and opened a square minimalist style box that Simon himself provided with a creative similar to the packaging of later generations. Card digital camera.

Girl C took the camera out of the box and placed it on the treadmill console.

Simon looked at it, the body is beautiful dark blue, the overall length is about 18 cm wide and 12 cm wide, and the thickness is about 3.5 cm. Compared with other digital cameras of this era, it is already very compact.

In addition, there is a word printed on the front of the fuselage: Tinkerbell.

This is Claire’s name for his company, Tinkerbell, Tinkerbell, the name of the elf in Peter Pan’s novel, Spielberg’s “Captain Hawk”, which is about to be completed, Julie This role is played by Ya Roberts.

It has been more than half a century since the publication of "Peter Pan", and the name Tinkerbell will naturally not go unnoticed.

In order to successfully register Tinkerbell Inc. C girl also spent an extra sum of money.

Simon joked in private that the same is the name of a woman. If this company really develops, it may be considered the fifth woman of the Westeros system.

Girl C admits generously that she thinks so.

In addition to the company name, there is also the naming of the camera itself: iCam10.

iCam, naturally means taking, which is also Simon's instruction.

In the coming Internet era, any company that has a relationship with Com or Com will attract much attention.

In the wave of new technologies around the millennium in memory, many companies have deliberately changed their names in order to cater to the Internet concept, adding'i' or'com' to the company name.

Tinkerbell Inc. has no way to add an Internet logo, so I just make an article on the product.

In addition to iCam, Simon also asked Claire to register trademarks such as iPhone, iDisk, etc. around the world.

At the moment these are naturally unusable, but they are also regarded as an alternative reserve.

Simon changed from jogging to walking. After slowing down, he picked up the dark blue iCam10 card camera and played it. In addition to the front camera, there was a 1.5-inch LCD screen in the back. The camera used three traditional It is obviously unrealistic to use lithium batteries in the 5th battery in this era.

The storage device is a 3.5-inch universal floppy disk. Looking at the manual, it can store about 50 photos.

The C girl next to him quickly opened another box, this one is lilac.

Electronic products of this era are mainly practical, and rarely consider appearance. Simon is accustomed to all kinds of beautiful industrial designs later, which will naturally not be tolerated.At this time, a dark blue and a light purple, facing male and female customers, were also affected by Simon.

In order to achieve these two shell colors, C girl also invested a lot of additional costs.

"We have ordered 1,000 iCam materials, which can be fully assembled by the middle of this month. The cost may be more than about 320 US dollars." Girl C said while demonstrating the operation of the camera in her hand, "After finishing these The initial funding of 1 million US dollars is probably only 150,000 US dollars."

After all, it's because of the people around him, Simon has always been concerned about this matter.

With only 1,000 cameras, the total cost would be US$320,000 according to the calculation of US$320.Previously, there was Tinkerbell's operation, camera development, equipment parts customization, etc., all of which cost money.

In the end, there is still 150,000 dollars left, which is very difficult.

Neil Brantly, the engineer who was mainly responsible for the research and development in cooperation with C Girl, also hoped to be able to customize a special CMOS sensor. Because of funding, he could only choose the existing public version of the sensor.

Simply put, although fully prepared, Girl C is actually cautious enough in this matter, probably wanting to give herself a few more entrepreneurial opportunities.

It was easy to grasp how to use it. Simon finally got off the treadmill and gestured to girl C: "Look at a POSE."

Claire noticed, leaning on the treadmill with the lilac camera in one hand, a smile on her beautiful face, a slender body slightly tilted, like a car model, a thin and fair white between the low-waisted slacks and tight black T-shirt The waist, even Simon had a thought to click on the girl's belly button.

Pressing the shutter and taking a series of photos continuously, Simon walked out of the gym and said, "Go, see the effect, and help you by the way."

Claire found that her boss had just clearly moved her body, but she didn't do anything. This made her a little disappointed again, but she quickly followed.

It is not the first time to fail anyway.

Even, a few girls have already bet in private, who can make their boss tempted, even if it is not going to bed, but only the ambiguousness of other standards, are considered winners.

Unfortunately, no one has won until now.

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