When Zhang Lexing first met Chen Zishan, he happened to talk about "Resident Evil", and by the way he remembered Capcom, so he asked the blue information market research company to pay attention to it. The main content of the investigation report sent now is the recent situation of Capcom, and sure enough, as Zhang Lexing expected, Capcom has been involved in the whirlpool of crisis.

Capcom was founded in May 1979 by the founder Kenzo Qianmoto, then the name was still called "I.R.M", the main business is to rent arcade substrates, machines and sell related motor parts, with the OEM of Tatio (Space Invaders), Capcom has achieved rapid development, and has also introduced many investors, such as the motor and liquid crystal equipment manufacturing company NANAO has become the largest shareholder of "I.R.M", It even included Yoshihiko Takado, the founder of one of Capcom's later main rivals, Shinnippon Project (the predecessor of SNK, which was only officially renamed SNK in 1986). Because of the huge profits in the OEM business, the company's second largest shareholder, Kenzo Tsumoto, was elected president.

In 1982, after capital expansion, I.R.M. Co., Ltd. changed its name to IREM and began to develop its own arcade games, but a serious internal split soon followed, mainly due to the establishment of new companies for personal gain in the company's business, which led to serious friction between Kenzo Mimoto and Yoshihiko Takado. At first, Kenzo Kanmoto had the upper hand as president, but Yoshihiko Takado soon rebelled at the shareholders' meeting, and Kenzo Kanmoto was forced to resign, and Yoshihiko Takado became the new president of IREM. Kenzo Kanmoto and Yoshihiko Takado have formed a deep hatred since then, and many years later, there have been many incidents of malicious poaching between their companies, which has also become an anecdote in the industry.

After resigning as president, Kenzo Mimoto and his henchmen left IREM and established a new company, Capcom, in June 1983. At first, Capcom had only 10 regular employees, but with Kenzo Mimoto's keen insight and the pillars of the company, such as Noritaka Funamizu, Yoshiki Okamoto, and Tokuro Fujiwara, Capcom began to develop rapidly, and succeeded in arcades and FC (Nintendo Red and White Machines), and even gradually suppressed Yoshihiko Takado, who had more financial resources (mastering the two clubs of SNK and IREM).

In 1988, Capcom spent 1 billion yen to develop the CPS1 arcade substrate for two years, and later developed many classic works such as "Great Demon Village", "Famous General", "Heaven and Earth Devouring", "Kombat Whirlwind" and many other classic works based on this substrate, which became a major nugget weapon for Capcom.

In 1991, Capcom's revolutionary new product "Street Fighter II" was launched, which did not cause much turmoil in the early days, and many people regarded "Street Fighter II" as a game like "Kombat Whirlwind", and even thought that there was only a boss and no miscellaneous soldiers, and it was not fun to fight. Later, some people gradually discovered the fun of fighting against people, which is a kind of fun that is completely incomparable with the dull computer AI, and finally formed an irresistible arcade pop storm, many teenagers who are addicted to home consoles have dropped their handles and poured into the nearby arcade hall to experience this revolutionary game, and for a time the streets and alleys resounded with the sound of children shouting "Hao Oil Terrier". This was an opportunity to spark a big craze for fighting games, and many manufacturers also took the opportunity to launch many similar products, such as SNK's "Legend of the Hungry Wolf". ONE OF THE MOST EXCESSIVE IS DATAEAST, NOT ONLY LAUNCHED A VERY SIMILAR SETTING "HISTORY OF FIGHTERS", BUT EVEN THE MAIN PROGRAMMER OF THE GAME WAS POACHED FROM CAPCOM, AND A PROTRACTED LAWSUIT BEGAN FROM THIS, WHICH ENDED WITH DATAEAST LOSING THE LAWSUIT AND "HISTORY OF FIGHTERS" BEING BANNED (IN FACT, IT WAS NOT OVER).

Looking at the counterfeit products of other companies one after another, Kenzo Mimoto couldn't sit still, and under his instruction, Capcom also launched multiple versions of "Street Fighter II" one after another, the first to be listed were DASH and TURBO two versions, and once again achieved quite good results, which encouraged "Super Street Fighter II-THENEWCHALLENGERS" to be released soon, but because it was a rush work, the balance was greatly affected. However, Capcom was not discouraged, and soon came up with the "Super Street Fighter IIX-GRANDMASTERCHALLENGE", which is known as the ultimate completion form, and the biggest change is the addition of speed adjustment settings and super hidden character Ghost. In addition, Capcom did not waste this popular theme in the home console market, and successively launched different versions of "Street Fighter II" on SFC (Super Nintendo), Sega MD and 3DO consoles. At this time, in the early days of entrepreneurship, it was admired by Kenzo to the point that "creative kung fu" had been completely forgotten, and only the word "making money" remained.

In 1994, Capcom's performance began to take a sharp turn for the worse, due to the "Street Fighter II" series of works launched too frequently and a large number of similar products from other manufacturers competed to come out, the market finally appeared seriously saturated, resulting in millions of cassettes stacked in the warehouse no one cared about, especially in the European and American markets, Kenzo had to order the destruction of these unsalable products, resulting in direct losses of more than tens of millions of dollars, even the Wall Street Journal The news of Capcom's use of a giant roller to crush cassette tapes was published, and Capcom's stock price plummeted.

……

At the same time, the new office building of Capcom at No. 1 1-3, Hirano Town, Chuo-ku, Osaka City was silent, and everyone walking in the building was cautious, especially the newcomers who had not been in the company for a long time did not even dare to take a breath of atmosphere. In the president's office on the top floor of the building, Kenzo Kanmoto looked at the report in his hand, and his heart was no longer filled with the joy he felt last year when he made a net profit of 15 billion yen in the previous year, nor the ambition when the company's shares were listed on the Osaka Stock Exchange last year, nor the feeling that he had everything under control when he spent money to build the company's office building, but only frustration and pain. It's only been a year, I didn't expect there to be such a big change, the game cartridges that the company spent a lot of money to produce became garbage in the warehouse in a blink of an eye, not only can not be exchanged for a dime, but also occupy the warehouse space rented by spending money in vain, and finally have to spend money to rent a roller to crush these cassette, where is the cartridge pressed, it is clearly a pile of dollars, every time I think of this, Kenzo feels that his heart is dripping blood.

The company is in some trouble, but I didn't expect the employees to be uneasy. That Fujiwara Tokuro is the most hateful, thinking that when Konano was laid off, he and Okamoto Yoshiki were very down, if it wasn't for the kindness of Kenzo to recruit them, maybe they would have starved to death. After joining the company, Kenzo also entrusted the two of them with important responsibilities and was in charge of a development team. At first, the two development teams did not like Kenzo Mimoto's "VULGUS" and "SONSON", but he still supported them and wrote a banner of "Creative Kung Fu" in Chinese characters to encourage them. Unexpectedly, now the company has encountered temporary difficulties, Fujiwara Tokuro actually handed in his resignation immediately, and he had no intention of keeping this kind of person who wanted to be a deserter, so he agreed to his resignation with a stroke of the pen. I didn't expect Fujiwara Tokuro to leave by himself, but he actually pulled away the backbone of his original department, and started a game development club WhoopeeCamp, and I heard that Sony also invested in them. Fujiwara Tokuro did this, Capcom Company became even more panicked, and many people chose to leave one after another, and many of the company's development projects were affected as a result, and even completely suspended.

In fact, in Kenzo Qianmoto's view, the company's troubles are not too big, but it is just a little more loans. When the building was first built, not all of them raised their hands in agreement, and they also fought for the allocation of offices, and no one felt that there were too many loans at that time. If it weren't for the backlog of those cassettes and the money invested, there would have been no problem at all with the installment of the loan. Those banks are the same, when they took out loans last year, they begged Capcom to do business with them, but now there is only a small problem, and they can't get them to extend the loan a little, and they don't want to talk about it if they want to convert the loan into shares in the company.

"It's all a bunch of hateful things!" Qian Ben Xiansan slammed the report on the table and said indignantly.

……

After reading the investigation report sent by the blue information market research company, Zhang Lexing has a certain understanding of the crisis that Capcom is facing, simply put, Capcom's loan can not be repaid as scheduled, and the fundamental reason is that the president has forgotten the previous successful experience (the company's profits are mainly used to open arcade business centers and invest in the development of new arcade boards, rather than to build office buildings or squander), plus the company's stock listing is a bit fluttering, so the loan started the company's office building construction plan, As a result, I caught up with the backlog of game cartridges again, and it became what it is now.

Capcom's major crisis is not the only one, Zhang Lexing remembers that in 2003, there was a more serious crisis than now, the culprit is still the Qianben family headed by the president Kenzo Kanmoto, they not only embezzled a lot of funds for purposes other than game development, but the president Kenzo Kanmoto made a large number of failed investments in real estate, which eventually led to a huge deficit of nearly 40 billion yen in Capcom's financial accounts in March 2003. In order to repay the debt, a large number of assets, including the Capcom Building, had to be sold off as collateral. Shinji Mikami, the main creator of the "Resident Evil" series, resigned from his position as head of the Fourth Development Department, and the company's veteran Yoshiki Okamoto quit the company in anger.

For Capcom, Zhang Lexing has been in love for a long time, and the long list of classic works on the arcade alone is enough to make people salivate. In Zhang Lexing's memory, Capcom's crisis finally disappeared invisibly, which may have been the result of the efforts of the three people who moved to the original Kensan, and of course, the unexpected success of "Resident Evil" also played a considerable role in this. However, since Zhang Lexing has taken a fancy to Capcom, he naturally will not wait for Qian Benxian San to make a move, and it is the best time to take advantage of the civil strife in Capcom now.

So Zhang Lexing picked up the phone to contact Mai Jiajun, who had just completed a corporate merger and acquisition and was on vacation, and then faxed a copy of the information in his hand.

After reading the information, Mai Jiajun called back: "Lexing, this company should have the possibility of acquisition." I asked someone to check Capcom's shareholding structure, and there are still about 44.81% of the shares in the hands of the Qianben family, and from this point of view, there is still hope for more than half of it. And now Capcom's share price is at its lowest point in recent times due to a lot of unfavorable news, and the cost of the acquisition is relatively low, I estimated, about $260 million. Lexing, do you have a stake in the Traveler Group? ”

"Well, there's about 35% of the shares in it, and that's a lot of years ago. What, what does this have to do with the Traveler Group? ”

"Lexing, sometimes I really admire your investment vision, I heard Xin'er say that you only invested four million dollars in it back then, do you know how many times it has increased now?"

Of course, this Zhang Lexing knows, otherwise he wouldn't have bothered to get in touch with Sandy Well, the current Traveler Group is not strong, and it will be a real financial monster after a few years of merger into Citigroup, the reason why Zhang Lexing wants to pull Mai Jiajun over is actually to find someone who is familiar with finance and more reliable to help him speak.

Mai Jiajun's voice came from the earpiece again: "Lexing, according to my investigation, Traveler Group currently owns about 12.06% of Capcom's shares, and I believe that with the current market and your connections, it should be easy to win this part." ”

"I think so, I can give Sandy a call if needed, and I'm sure he'll be happy to transfer it if the price is reasonable."

"I'll get in touch with him first, and if I can't talk about it, I'll talk about it. Lexing, do you have any other requirements? ”

"I only have two points, the first must be Capcom Holdings, and the second is that the family must be out." In Zhang Lexing's view, the Qianben family is like a cancer to Capcom, if they are not cleaned up, sooner or later they will drag Capcom down, Zhang Lexing does not want to be made by them in the future to make a huge deficit of tens of billions of yen.

The voice of Mai Jiajun inhaling came from the phone, it seemed that this request was a bit difficult, and after a while, Mai Jiajun's voice came out of the earpiece again: "Lexing, the first request is fine, the second one is more difficult, but I will try my best to do it well." The contract will be ready tomorrow, and you can arrange someone to come to my office to have a look, and if there is no problem, we can start work after signing the contract. ”

"Okay, I'll arrange someone right away, and I'll come to your office as soon as possible, waiting for your good news!"

"No problem, in less than a month, you will be able to see Capcom's equity transfer agreement."

Hanging up the phone, Zhang Lexing dialed the number of Hua Ziqing, general manager of Oriental Holdings, again, and asked him to arrange for someone to go to Mak Ka Jun's office to sign the contract as soon as possible.

When Kenzo was still struggling with how to solve the dilemma he was facing, he didn't expect that his company had been targeted, and the acquisition of Capcom by Oriental Holdings quietly kicked off......

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