Manhattan, inside a red-brick apartment on Morton Street in Greenwich Village.

It's Friday, June 24th.

At breakfast time for the Spurt family, Grace Spurt and the family's nanny, Ms. Hannah, share breakfast for her husband and children before taking a seat at the table.

Bill Popert put down the New York Times in his hand, picked up the cutlery, and listened to the two children excitedly discuss how to spend the weekend, but his expression was a little more worried.

It's summer vacation, and if it was a previous year, the couple should be able to send the two little ones to some summer camps, and sometimes use their annual vacation to travel together, but this year they had to cancel all plans.

Credit Suisse's integrated layoffs of First Boston have been officially launched, and during this time, employees have been called for interviews and then left, and some departments have even been cut entirely. As a 43-year-old junior supervisor who has not yet made his mark, Bill Sport is well aware that he may be called in for a conversation in the next half or half a month at most.

Wall Street is the world of young people who are as energetic as wolves.

At his age, once he is laid off, it will be difficult to find the same type of job on Wall Street, and even more helplessly, he has no other skills.

Perhaps, you can go for a taxi.

It seems that the income of a taxi driver in New York is still good, although he will be very tired and has no status, but if it really comes to that point, he probably can't care about anything else, as a somewhat macho person in his bones, it is impossible for him to let his wife make money to support the family alone.

According to the family's past expenses, it seems that they can't afford it.

Grace Spoor, who allowed her two children to swim at Long Island Beach on the weekend, noticed the gloom on her husband's face, glanced at the New York Times that was placed next to her, and took the initiative to find a topic and asked, "Bill, is there any news today?"

Bill Sport smiled reluctantly at his wife's voice, but shook his head and did not respond as usual.

I've been exhausted lately.

This time the layoffs and integration, of course, some people will be eliminated, and some people will be able to get promotion opportunities. During this time, Bill Sport has been using the few resources and connections in his hands to do his best, but unfortunately with little success, which also makes him feel more and more that he is about to face the end.

Although he didn't respond, hearing his wife's question, Bill Spurt had a headline in the economic section of the New York Times just in his mind: 'Daenerys Entertainment Group IPO is 37 times oversubscribed'.

For many popular companies, it is not uncommon for them to be oversubscribed by more than ten or even dozens of times during the IPO process.

Daenerys Entertainment Group's IPO is very different.

The IPO price of the fast-rising Hollywood entertainment giant was officially set at $22.5, $2.5 higher than the $18 to $20 range initially announced. With 250 million new shares issued, the overall valuation of the IPO is US$53.1 billion, and the financing scale reaches US$5.625 billion.

Both the IPO valuation and the size of the fundraising have hit a record high on Wall Street.

Therefore, compared with those companies with IPO financing scale of only tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars, Daenerys Entertainment Group is 37 times oversubscribed by more than 1,700 investment institutions around the world, which is definitely a pioneering achievement.

Oversubscription means that many investment institutions are unable to obtain shares in the end, which also means that the market will buy strongly after the company is officially listed**. It is conceivable that next Friday Daenerys Entertainment will be officially listed, what a grand occasion it will be.

IBM, as the first listed company in the United States in terms of market capitalization, has recently been in jeopardy under the close pursuit of Cisco and AOL, and now, there is no need to wait for Cisco and AOL to overtake, Daenerys Entertainment is listed, and IBM is expected to easily sweep to the second place.

Recently, various financial media and Wall Street analysts have speculated whether Daenerys Entertainment will go one step further and become the first corporate giant in U.S. history with a market value of more than $100 billion.

Based on the approximate financial report data for the first half of 1994 recently revealed by Daenerys Entertainment and the strong upward momentum of continuous growth in all aspects of this comprehensive entertainment group, the market value has reached 100 billion US dollars, and the price-to-earnings ratio is only about 40 times, which is not excessive at all.

Therefore, this is a real possibility.

The lead underwriters of Daenerys Entertainment's IPO are Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, but other investment banks can actually get a piece of the pie through various other partnerships, as one of the old investment banks on Wall Street, First Boston has made similar efforts before.

It's a pity that I couldn't do it for various reasons.

The reason why the parent company Credit Suisse is determined to integrate First Boston, and the inaction of First Boston's management in the process of this Daenerys Entertainment IPO, is actually a reason that cannot be ignored.

The Westeros system, which has rapidly risen into a super-behemoth over the years, is now the focus of all the financial giants on Wall Street.

Bill Speart couldn't help but fantasize about how good it would be if he could get some business from this Daenerys Entertainment IPO, so that not only would he not leave this time, but he would definitely be able to go further.

It's a pity that the business of contacting Daenerys Entertainment is mainly the work of the investment banking department, and it is not their turn to intervene in the sales and trading department, not to mention, even if he can intervene, this job will not fall on him.

Now, the waste hasn't taken over the business, but the whole company has been laid off.

Her husband was not in the mood to speak, so Grace could only turn her attention to the two children, occasionally glancing at her frowning husband, and Grace decided that she would have an open and honest conversation with her husband this weekend.

With the resources she has recently acquired, Grace has spoken to Elite President John Casablanca a few times and offered to ask that she should be promoted.

A young man's final plan, she certainly wouldn't be stupid enough to reveal it to Casablanca.

So, in the eyes of John Casablanca, she took Simon Westeros's thighs that couldn't be thicker, which can obviously provide more help for the further development of the elite, and the request for promotion is very reasonable.

Not surprisingly, she will soon become Vice President of Elite North America.

Although she is only one of the three vice presidents, and it is only limited to the North American branch, although there is only one more 'deputy' word from John Casablanca's position, which is actually several levels away, she is also a big step forward compared to the past, and officially became the management of elite.

The couple originally had the same level of income.

Now, even if her husband loses his job, with her salary at least double in the future, at least there is no problem in maintaining the current standard of living.

In fact, it was not that she did not consider helping her husband through the channels of that young man, however, since the last time they met in Greenwich, during this time, there was no order from there, but she has never seen each other again.

Some of the thoughts that had arisen in her were gone.

It's hard to say whether it will backfire if you talk about something that is too small for that young man to talk about her husband's job.

Although they only got along for a very short time, although he always behaved very gently in the process of getting along, out of the woman's keen sixth sense, she could feel the indifference and alienation under the surface of this gentleness, and even the indifference to the whole world.

Thinking of this, Grace, who was sitting at the dining table, couldn't help but take a small deep breath.

The mysterious temperament of the little man, like a dark abyss, actually does not make women resist, on the contrary, this temperament is easy for women to step into, and then be trapped in that world, never to climb out again.

Suddenly the voice of her son Thunder sounded at the dining table, and the child asked if the family could go to the cinema to watch "Batman: The Dark Knight Rises" again tonight, Grace's thoughts were interrupted, she woke up, thought that there were no other arrangements for the night, and looked at her husband again, so she nodded in agreement.

After breakfast, she sent her husband out of the house, and Grace explained that the nanny needed to buy some daily necessities at home, and then drove out of the apartment on Morton Street with her two children.

It's 8:20 a.m.

Fifteen minutes drive to a private training center in Midtown, where the two children take French classes three days a week during the summer, in preparation for the children's next step into a better private high school in Manhattan, where French is a must if you want to get into some of the top private schools.

Campus students in Hollywood film and television productions are always 'carefree', falling in love, drag racing, taking drugs, fighting, partying, partying, ...... Recklessness and squandering youth are indeed the living conditions of many American middle school students, but they are basically public middle schools.

Most of these people will enter society in a 'carefree' and become the bottom of American society, destined to be like ants all their lives, doing nothing, and often becoming the most direct victims of the economic downturn in the United States.

The United States is a meritocracy.

If you are not born into the elite class, and you want to enter that circle, you are destined to give up that carefreeness, and even then, many times the climb of several generations is not necessarily accepted by a certain circle.

Grace still remembers her two children going to kindergarten.

At that time, the couple wanted to send their children to a famous private kindergarten with a long history on the Upper West Side, and they thought that they could do it for a little more money, but as a result, the children had to be interviewed for admission, and it was definitely not a symbolic interview, for which she even took her daughter, Rita, who was only 3 years old at the time, to preschool training, and then watched her daughter be commanded and manipulated like a small animal by the arrogant kindergarten interviewer.

As a result, thousands of dollars were spent on training, and I was still rejected after the interview.

Grace was not reconciled, and a year later, her youngest son Ray tried to sprint again, but still failed.

At that time, the couple also calculated whether they could get tickets by donating a sum of money to the kindergarten, gritted their teeth and proposed a donation of $100,000, but they were still rejected.

Then understand that this is the threshold.

A barrier to the upper class and the ordinary elite in the United States.

Tiny Manhattan, just ten kilometers deep, the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side, Midtown, and Lower City, are distinct.

Grace later learned that the main reason for their children's rejection was that they were not residents of the Upper West Side, and this condition does not mean that you can go to the Upper West Side and rent a house, you must also have a fixed real estate and have the corresponding social status.

Otherwise, families with a lot of money and a certain prestige do not want their children to get along with some inexplicable children. So even if they write a check for $100,000, which is by no means insignificant, they will still be turned away.

Since then, both husband and wife have actually held their breath in their hearts.

It's just that with the lack of improvement in her husband's career for many years, she can't do much as a woman in the modeling economy industry, and some of the injustices and ambitions in the past have faded away unconsciously, and in the end, some of the remaining ones are also pinned on the two children.

After sending the two children to the training center and explaining, Grace hurried to the Elite headquarters a few blocks away.

Although her application for promotion had not yet been approved, the number of personal assistants had increased to three during this time, assisting her in the sudden increase in various tasks.

During this time, many models who heard the news, whether they were within Elite or other company clients, also wanted to be able to transfer to her name.

Grace didn't be greedy, she just picked and chose to accept five or six, but she cut off more than half of the original thirty-odd customers, and directly gave up those girls who had little potential and were destined to waste her energy. In the past, these customers could bring her some income, but now, if she continues to hold it in her hands, the effort and the meager income will become very unequal.

There were some girls who begged to stay with her, but Grace didn't relent.

The way of the world is like this.

After the adjustment, in addition to the three Grave family members who have been quietly crossed out by her heart, Grace now has 21 models in her hands, and the overall quality has increased a lot.

Among them, the baby-faced girl named Qusi Gauff has been confirmed as the new Victoria's Secret Angel, and the other two places are still undecided, and Grace also believes that the little man will not break his word to her. After this period of careful selection, Grace will pass another list to Westeros' assistant today.

I think we'll be able to confirm at least one more spot this time.

When she arrived at the office and was about to start her day, John Casablanca's assistant came to call her.

Arriving at the president's office, John Casablanca was talking on the phone behind his desk, and another model was sitting in the office reception area, Karen Mulder.

Seeing Grace enter the door, Karen Mulder apparently took the initiative to stand up with some flattery.

Grace smiled and shook hands with Karen Mulder, then nodded to Casablanca, and sat down on the sofa in the reception area for the time being, chatting casually with Karen Mulder in a casual tone without being unfamiliar.

Although not as good as Cindy Crawford and Linda Ivan Golinsta, Karen Mulder is also one of the supermodels that Elite has been holding since the 80s. It's a pity that since the first Victoria's Secret show, this supermodel who originally had a lot of momentum has been swept down, and the second session last year is still the same.

missed the strong exposure platform of Victoria's Secret, and there are so many backward girls rising rapidly, Karen Mulder soon showed a tendency to die on the beach in the first wave, the girl has lost three endorsements in the past two years, if there is no improvement this year, it is estimated that the last two niche brand endorsements on her body will also leave her.

At that time, there will be no chance of turning over at all.

As for the reason for all this, it is now well known in circles.

And it's simple and crude.

Simon Westeros doesn't like thick-lipped girls.