After having a Thanksgiving dinner with the women in Malibu, Eric rushed to New York with Nizi.

East Hampton is more suitable as a summer retreat, when winter is a bleak scene of desolate smoke and grass, and even more deserted when combined with heavy snowfall. As the winter came, Virginia and Joanna moved to Southampton, which was more densely populated and had better infrastructure.

Thanksgiving night was still very lively, and although the two women gave the family workers and nannies a day off, Chris and Emily rushed over, plus Eva. Pakula, along with Nizi and her two twin henchmen, filled the restaurant to the brim.

"When I was in college, I deliberately studied Warren Buffett's deeds," because talking about the Firefly's acquisition of ABC that has been in the media in recent days, Chris said of Buffett with interest: "The main reason why Buffett has been able to accumulate his current wealth with diversified investments is that he is pure enough and he can concentrate on investing to the extreme." All those who know Warren Buffett know that Buffett almost regards investment as the only pursuit in his life, as a billionaire with billions of dollars, he is unwilling to spend a penny more to improve his life, his personal life is very simple, even his eating habits are terrible, and the main theme of his life is to read countless financial reports and select suitable companies for investment. This kind of practice of studying a company from the fundamentals of a company can maximize the development potential of a company by detaching itself from professional stock trend analysis. That's why Warren Buffett has been on the right track for most of the decades. ”

Everyone listened to Chris with great interest, but Nizi, who was sitting next to Eric and munching on turkey meat, said coldly, "I heard that he brought Solomon down." ”

Salomon Brothers was the king of Wall Street in the eighties. When Solomon was in his prime, investment banks such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan, and Lehman could only be regarded as Solomon's younger brother. But Salomon was investigated by the SEC in 1990 for a false bidding case, and then quickly decayed, less than four years later, and now Salomon Brothers has become a second-rate investment firm. At the time of the sham bidding case, Warren Buffett's Berkshire. Hathaway happens to be the largest shareholder of Salomon Brothers, at the time of the investigation. Warren Buffett personally took over all the management affairs of Solomon, if only on the surface, the Salomon brothers did collapse at the hands of Buffett.

Chris heard Nizi's words. Shaking his head and chuckling, he said: "Things are not as simple as you think, this matter is mainly because Solomon is too popular. Take, for example, the sham bidding case three years ago, when the federal securities exchange law required an investment bank to write up to 35 percent of each Treasury bond offering, but Salomon Brothers did so through sham bidding. Got 85% of the bond distribution share. And then through the way of reselling to other investment banks to make a huge difference, similar things often happened throughout the eighties, so after Solomon was investigated by the SEC, other capital forces rose up in groups. Of course, Buffett's later disposal measures also made a big mistake, Solomon just passed the SEC investigation, Buffett couldn't wait to break the rules of Wall Street and drastically cut the salaries and dividends of Solomon employees, and finally caused a large number of employees to leave. Without these talents, Solomon will have no capital to make a comeback. I've heard that Solomon has recently been targeted by Citibank. I don't think it will last a few years. ”

After Chris finished speaking, there was a moment of silence in the restaurant, and even the two little ones felt the abnormality of the atmosphere and stared at their mother with wide eyes.

In the end, Emily, who was still straightforward, smiled and said, "Eric, it seems that you should be careful, the fireflies seem to be in the limelight too much." ”

Eric took a casual sip of red wine, shrugged his shoulders and said, "Every year on Wall Street, large and small investment companies fail, but have you ever seen a big movie company that is crushed by its peers?" ”

Emily retorted bluntly: "Aren't Raiden Hua, Lianmei, and now MGM all about to collapse?" ”

When Chris heard his girlfriend's words, he couldn't help but turn his head, and Eric looked at Emily and said with a smile: "Yes, but they can't play in Hollywood because of their own problems." ”

Chris also said to his girlfriend at this time: "Most of the business of investment banks is virtual financial products, and most of these products come from other companies, they earn profits by virtue of commissions for stock issuance, bond underwriting, corporate mergers and acquisitions, etc., but they themselves do not have much output. But film companies like Time Warner, Firefly and Viacom, which just acquired Paramount, have formed a complete industrial chain internally, and unless it is a bankruptcy crisis caused by huge losses caused by huge investment projects, they will not be so easily crushed by external forces. ”

"I've seen some news recently," Emily said with some unconvinced feelings: "As I analyzed in an article in the New York Times two years ago, if Firefly Pictures continues to expand, it is likely to violate federal antitrust laws and be forcibly broken up." ”

If it is split due to antitrust laws, the majority shareholder of the company can only choose to keep the shares of one company, and the shares of the other company must be forced to sell, which does not mean that a major shareholder like Eric can continue to keep the two companies after the split.

Emily's words seemed to be on point, and Chris also showed a worried look, looked at Eric and said, "I think this is indeed a matter that needs to be carefully considered, Eric, before you buy ABC, you are 100% sure that you will not cause this kind of problem in the end." ”

Eric has also studied the relevant antitrust laws, but he is more aware of the development trend of the great consolidation of the American media industry in the next decade, so he is very relaxed: "Don't worry. There will be no problem, in fact, I think the integration of media channels is more in line with the interests of the federal government, what do you think? ”

There is no country where the government does not want to control the channels of public opinion. The so-called strict freedom of any country is also relative, and on Wall Street, where information collision is the most intense, Chris knows this truth very well, so he also nodded and smiled: "It seems that this is indeed the case." ”

Virginia saw Eric and Chris playing dumb riddles in vague words, and said dissatisfiedly: "Gentlemen, we won't understand if we continue to talk about it, so let's have some light topics." ”

Eric nodded, "Hmm." Well, today's turkey tastes good, better than ...... Forehead. Tastes good, not bad. ”

Eric almost blurted out the 'weird turkey' that the women had made up the night before, but luckily stopped talking at the last minute, but Virginia was sensitive enough to hear something. Throw Eric a big roll of the eye. The rest of the restaurant looked uncomfortable when they saw Eric holding back a sentence. They all laughed.

Although it was only nine o'clock after dinner, I didn't know when it was snowing outside, and it would have taken two hours to get back to Manhattan from the easternmost point of Long Island, and it would have taken longer in the snow and slippery roads, and it was very unsafe, so Eric invited Chris and Emily to stay.

The villa was big and the room was adequate, and neither of Chris refused.

The women went about their business after dinner. Someone watches TV, someone watches the dining area in the kitchen. Someone else looked at the two little ones. Eric and Chris sat by the old-fashioned fireplace in the villa and chatted about the acquisition of Victoria's Secret parent company, LTD.

During this time, Chris has been secretly absorbing LTD shares, and it is expected that after the New Year, he can officially enter the board of directors of LTD with his holdings, and then launch an acquisition offensive.

Leslie. As the largest individual shareholder of LTD, Wexner holds 35% of the shares, so the success rate of this acquisition is not 100%. Weckers Naira takes more than 51% of the shares, then he has no choice but to abandon the acquisition. However, it is precisely this uncertainty that makes Chris seem scrappy, and if everything is going well, it seems a little too boring. Moreover, even if the final acquisition fails, LTD will need to pay a certain price if it wants to redeem the shares in the hands of Firefly Investment, so this acquisition will not bring any loss to Firefly Investment.

The two talked until late at night before Eric came to the bedroom.

In the middle of the big bed lay a small spot, Joanna leaned sideways beside Hawaii, with one hand on her head, holding a book in her hand and reading softly, seeing Eric come in, Joanna put down the book and said, "You sleep with Vicky tonight, Emily and they are here, you can't let people see jokes." ”

"Okay, let me kiss our little darling first," Eric smiled and lay on the bed, came to Hawaii and kissed the little one's pink face, and took the book in Joanna's hand and looked at it, it turned out to be a "Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tale".

Shaking the book, Eric smiled and asked, "How do you read this kind of book to our little princess?" ”

Joanna smiled and took the book back from Eric's hand and said, "What else do you read?" ”

Eric lay down beside the little one, watching Hawaii's pretty blue eyes dangle between him and his mother, and continued with a smile: "Anything is fine, but it's better not to be a fairy tale, it will teach bad children, if my daughter grows up to learn the princess in fairy tales elopes with the groom, I will go crazy." ”

"You're always thinking about these nonsense," Joanna patted Eric on the shoulder, glanced at the book in her hand, frowned at her pretty eyebrows, and said seriously, "Then I'll go to the bookstore tomorrow to see if there's anything suitable for Xia Xia to read." ”

"Are you serious?" Eric looked up, "It's just a joke, besides, the little guy may not be able to understand, right?" ”

Joanna retorted, "Of course I understand, Xia Xia is very smart. ”

Eric remembered Hawaii's reaction when he heard Joanna reading, and realized this, nodded approvingly, took the book of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales from Joanna's hand, and said, "Let me read a paragraph to the little darling, and listen to Daddy's voice." ”

Joanna pulled a pillow and put it next to Hawaii, lay down on her side relaxed, and said with a smile: "Aren't you afraid that she will learn badly?" ”

"Don't be afraid, if a groom dares to seduce my daughter, the five legs will be discounted together."

"Hehe......"

Eric said, turning to an article "The Ice Queen", this story is about the friendship between boys and girls, well, the subject matter is healthy and uplifting, very safe, that's all.

……

After Thanksgiving, Los Angeles began to implement a media publicity plan, and it seemed that all of a sudden, Firefly Pictures, which had been very conservative in terms of information disclosure, began to raise the profile. Michael. As the CEO of Firefly Pictures, Lynn even went into battle in person for the first time and appeared on a financial talk show on NBC TV Network, talking about the 'unknown' secrets in the development of Firefly Pictures. "Variety" magazine also made a high valuation of $25 billion for Firefly Pictures in an article, which made Eric who saw this manuscript angry, more or less, why 25 billion. However, he also knew that this was the data submitted by Firefly, and since the manuscript had been released, Eric did not correct anything.

At the same time, Katzenberg has been in close contact with Buffett, and the two met three times in Los Angeles in just one week. However, from every time Katzenberg wrote to Eric, there was no progress in the negotiations, because of the sudden outbreak of media opinion, Buffett also seemed to enter the wait-and-see phase.

Because of Eric's and Katzenberg's successive high-profile contacts with Buffett, the stock prices of the three major television networks, which had risen together, have changed differently, ABC's stock price has begun to soar, while NBC and CBS have fallen sharply, and even the stock price of News Corp., which owns the Fox television network, has also suffered.

Eric continued to spend time with the women and children in Southampton, occasionally going to Manhattan for some parties. Little Nizi, who lived with Eric, couldn't stand the cold and boring life in Southampton, and ran to Manhattan with two little followers the next day.

Although Thanksgiving has passed, the festive atmosphere shows no signs of disappearing, because Christmas is not far away, and Christmas seems to be a little more lively than Thanksgiving. (To be continued.) )