Carl Icahn's office isn't much different from four years ago, except for the addition of a Motorola to the hunt on the walls. Karl Icahn's appearance hasn't changed much, but looking at Zhang Ran's gaze has changed, at the beginning, Zhang Ran's eyes were a little high, there was a feeling that Lao Tzu ate more salt than you eat, and now I look at Zhang Ran's gaze with a few more wisps of admiration.

However, Karl Icahn's tone of voice was still the same, revealing indifference: "Mr. Zhang, last time you came to me to buy shares of Blockbuster, which company do you want to buy this time?"

Zhang Ran smiled and said: "It's not Motorola, it's Motorola Mobile!"

Karl Icahn was a little surprised when he heard this, stared at Zhang Ran's eyes and asked, "You are making movies, why did you think of buying a mobile phone business?"

Zhang Ran laughed: "This is not like what the wolf of Wall Street said, you should say, 'Of course you can, but you have to come up with a reasonable price'!"

Carl Icahn paid no attention to Zhang Ran's ridicule, which seemed to him to be even a compliment, he was the wolf of Wall Street, the wolf of fear of all business owners. The only thing that made him feel dissatisfied was that Zhang Ran was still afraid of himself four years ago, but now he doesn't care at all: "I'm just curious, when you bought Netflix, you announced that you would not lay off employees and not close stores, almost everyone thought you made a big mistake, but I didn't expect you to really do it." Now the DVD rental stores in the United States are basically dead, and only Blockbuster has successfully transformed. What do you want to do with your Motorola phone this time?"

Zhang Ran gently swiped the coffee in the cup with a spoon and said with a smile: "Movies will definitely be Internet-based in the future, and mobile phones will be the most important output port for movies." We usually can only watch movies in the cinema, but in the era of mobile Internet, I can watch them on the subway with my mobile phone, on the bed, and on the toilet. As long as there is an internet connection, you can watch it anywhere. But there are so many movies, how can I let everyone watch my movies on my mobile phone for the first time? I will produce mobile phones, and I can install our company's video website on my mobile phone!"

Carl Icahn suddenly realized: "I see!" He looked at Zhang Ran and smiled: "There is no problem in acquiring Motorola's mobile phone business, but you must come up with a reasonable price!"

Zhang Ran nodded slightly and said, "I will come up with a reasonable price, but I hope that you can convene a board meeting as soon as possible, so that the board of directors can agree to this matter, and it is best to negotiate the acquisition as soon as possible." ”

Cal Icahn said cheerfully, "Yes!"

After meeting with Carl Icahn, Zhang Ran quickly rushed back to Santa Monica, Los Angeles, to form a formal acquisition team.

The division of labor of the whole team is very clear, Zhang Ran is the commander-in-chief, Wu Ruide is the deputy commander-in-chief, and Ye Lin is the project leader to coordinate between Century Summit and Motorola. In addition, there are many heavyweights involved, such as Liang Nianjian, the former chairman of Motorola China, and Zhou Guangping, chief engineer and senior director of Motorola Beiping R&D Center.

Prior to this, Century Summit has carried out many mergers and acquisitions, and has good cooperation with many of the world's top professional institutions, and this acquisition has brought these companies in, including Morgan Stanley, Rothschild, Fuld Law Firm, Deloitte & Co., etc., who will provide professional support for this merger and acquisition.

On January 13, Zhang Ran finally waited for Sanjay Jia's call. Sanjay Jia told Zhang Ran that Motorola's board of directors had made a decision that selling the company was the best option and that he wanted to meet with Zhang Ran and start negotiations about the acquisition.

That afternoon, Zhang Ran and Wu Ruide flew to Chicago and quickly held talks with Sanjay Jia. Zhang Ran submitted a letter of intent to Motorola to buy Motorola, planning to make a full purchase of Motorola at a price of $40 per share, and proposed a deal within seven days.

The offer of $40 is exactly the price of Google's acquisition of Motorola in the last life. Zhang Ran just hopes to be like Google's acquisition of Motorola, a quick decision, and quickly take Motorola before Google, Microsoft and other giants intervene.

However, Sanjay Jia rejected Zhang Ran's request: "I'm very sorry, we can't trade in a short period of time. There are a lot of companies interested in Motorola, and we want to reach out to more potential buyers. We have to give these potential buyers some time to evaluate Motorola. After a month, we will respond to your offer!"

Zhang Ran chuckled in his heart when he heard this, knowing that things were in trouble, and this acquisition was going to turn into a bidding war, so he asked in a deep voice: "Microsoft and Google have both offered!"

Sanjay Jia spread his hands and said, "Mr. Zhang, I can't disclose the relevant information. In fact, it is good for everyone to stay out for a month, during this time, we can reach out to more buyers, and you can also carry out due diligence on Motorola. ”

Zhang Ran saw that Motorola was determined to bid, and knew that even if he offered $50 now, it would be useless, because the bid might be higher.

In the last Google's acquisition of Nortel Networks, Google had negotiated with Nortel Networks to complete the acquisition for $900 million, but at the critical moment, a consortium formed by Microsoft and Apple came out, and the two sides launched a bidding war, and finally Microsoft took Nortel Networks for $4.5 billion, and the purchase price increased fivefold.

It seems that the plan to complete the acquisition before the arrival of the number one leader will not be realized!

Zhang Ran groaned, and immediately said: "Then we will sign the confidentiality agreement as soon as possible, and our acquisition team will soon carry out due diligence on Motorola." ”

After the meeting with Sanjay Jia, Zhang Ran returned to Los Angeles to make adjustments to the entire acquisition plan. This kind of bidding acquisition, the whole process will be a process of wits and courage with other potential bidders, before this must figure out who their opponents are, whether the other party is a single acquisition, or a group acquisition like the acquisition of Nortel Networks, only by knowing who the opponent is, what strategies they adopt, can the corresponding tactics be formulated. To this end, the acquisition team has set up a special intelligence team to analyze the bidding opponents.

At the same time, the whole team was also fully operational, Morgan Stanley, as the financial advisor, was responsible for the overall coordination of the seller and conducted a detailed valuation analysis of Motorola, Rothschild began to contact domestic and foreign banks to raise funds for the acquisition, Fuld Law Firm began to conduct due diligence on the legal matters related to the acquisition project, including legal issues such as intellectual property, commercial agreements, employment, etc., and Deloitte began to conduct due diligence on Motorola's financial, tax, Cassidy, which is responsible for public relations and lobbying, developed and implemented a media strategy and began monitoring coverage and public opinion around the world.

After arranging the work, Zhang Ran handed over the work of the commander-in-chief to Wu Ruide, and he himself began to appear in front of the media to build momentum for the movie "One Man Puts on the Lights". Zhang Ran did not value Oscar much, but wanted to create a false impression that potential competitors would think that Zhang Ran was busy rushing for the Olympics and that the acquisition of Motorola had nothing to do with him.

Summit Entertainment is very confident in the quality of "One Person's Lights", coupled with the fact that it is its own boss's movie, if this kind of film is not Olympic Games, then what kind of film is Olympic Games, therefore, Summit Entertainment has "One Man Lights Up" as the key Olympic film this year.

After the start of the awards season at the end of November, with its excellent quality and the large public relations money spent by Summit Entertainment, "One Man's Lantern" swept all the way in the competition for best foreign language film at the major film critics associations. Whether it is Denmark's "A Better World", Canada's "Scorched Earth City", Algeria's "Outlaws", or Mexico's "Misfortune", they were all easily killed by "One Man Puts on the Lights". So far, in all the award ceremonies, in the competition for the best foreign language film, "One Man Puts on the Lights" has not lost a single one.

Some media commented that the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film is the most unsuspenseful award this year.

"One Man Puts on the Lights" is known as the "Citizen Kane" of the new century, and of course it is not only the best foreign language film award. In the race for Best Director and Best Picture, "One Man's Lights" and David Fincher's "The Social Network" staged a wonderful showdown. In the race for best director, Zhang Ran was ahead by a wide margin, and in the race for best picture, "The Social Network" was in the dust. In addition, "One Person's Lights" has won awards such as photography and editing, and Zhang Jingchu has also won three film critics association actresses, including the very important Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award.

The strong performance of "One Man with Lights" in the Oscar outpost made many people think of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" ten years ago. Many film critics and fans are talking about the fact that "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" won ten Oscar nominations and finally won four;

On January 15, the North American Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards were held at the Hollywood Patronus Theater at 6215 Sunset Boulevard. The Broadcast Film Critics Association is a very young award, and this year is only 16 years old. However, this award has some origins, it is a film critics organization co-founded by 199 TV stations and radio stations, and it is also the largest film critic organization in North America, so Hollywood stars are more buying, and the excitement of the annual awards ceremony is not inferior to the Golden Globe Awards.

From 1995 to 1999, the Radio Film Critics Association Awards took the route of high coldness, and the overlap rate with the Oscars was extremely low; but it was too cold, and the audience did not like it, and after entering the new century, they changed their standards and overlapped with the Oscars more and more, so they were praised as one of the four major weather vanes by good deeds.

The biggest winner of this year's Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards is undoubtedly Summit Entertainment, with 12 nominations for "Black Swan" invested by the company, 9 nominations including Best Director, Best Picture and Best Actress for "One Man's Lantern", 11 nominations each for "Earth Thunder" and "The King's Speech", Nolan's "Inception" and 9 nominations including Best Picture and Best Director.

At the awards ceremony that night, Zhang Ran won the Best Foreign Language Film Award without any suspense, followed by the Best Editing, and finally won the Best Director Award amazingly.

Zhang Ran stood on the stage and said with a smile: "I didn't expect that I could come up three times today, but unfortunately I prepared two speeches, both of which have been read, this time there is really nothing to say, thank you!"

"It's the first time in history that a foreign-language film has won the Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Director, and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" didn't do it, your husband is really amazing!" Natalie Portman, who was sitting next to Zhang Jingchu, said with a big belly and a little envy.

"I believe he can make a better movie!" Zhang Jingchu looked at the high-spirited Zhang Ran on the stage, and said with gentle eyes, "He is a genius, a real genius!"