After Sophie left, Eric hurriedly washed up and went to the hotel restaurant for breakfast.

In recent days, the affairs have been extremely complicated, not only will the team of Firefly Investment Company led by Chris rush to Paris today to discuss the acquisition of Nokia Group, but Eric will also give these local European film forces some sweetness according to the agreement he made with Jack Valenti last night, so that these local snakes will not come forward to obstruct the GATT negotiations. Moreover, it is impossible for him to completely let go of the publicity work of "Jurassic Park".

As Eric's first assistant, Alan sorted out some of today's newspapers in advance that needed Eric's attention, and when he saw Eric appear in the dining room, he placed a stack of newspapers on his table.

"Eric, I think you should take a look at this. Alan pointed to the top of the weekly.

Eric picked it up, a weekly newsweek in France, and although Alan only annotated the key pages in English, Eric could still understand why he had kept him interested.

Because the Newsweek devoted an entire page to an image of a Tyrannosaurus rex rampage through downtown Paris, with the headline prominently labeled 'Culture: America's Attack.'"

Eric doesn't have to read the content to almost guess what the article is about.

France, known as the most expensive film in history, "Sprout" failed at the box office in front of "Jurassic Park", with an investment of more than 160 million francs, only one million francs were recovered on the first day, and the box office is expected to be only about five million francs in the first week, which is not as much as the first day box office of "Jurassic Park" in France. It is understandable that the French would react in this way.

Eric quickly flipped through the next few minutes of the newspaper. I lost the mood to read. Today, newspapers in mainland France, both French and English, are basically talking about the box office of "Jurassic Park".

However, thinking of last night's party, the corners of Eric's mouth couldn't help but overflow with a slightly mocking sneer, even the film forces in France are going to defect to Hollywood in private, what is the use of these media desperately shouting, and in the end nothing can be decided.

Throwing today's newspaper aside, Eric instructed: "You call the manager of the French branch." Let him do proper crisis PR, and we will leave the rest alone. ”

Alan quickly jotted down Eric's instructions in the memo and added, "Mr. Hansen's flight will arrive at Charles de Gaulle Airport at about ten o'clock, and I have already arranged a few cars, do you want to pick it up yourself?"

"I'll go over myself," Eric nodded.

……

In the departure hall of Charles de Gaulle Airport, Chris and his party took a flight that landed at the airport almost a quarter of an hour later than expected.

Noticing Chris's figure at the exit of the VIP tunnel, Eric smiled and waved at the other party, and greeted him. Upon approaching, Eric realized that Chris's entourage was following him. Walking side by side with him was a middle-aged man who had nothing to do with firefly investment.

The middle-aged man is about forty years old and wears a pair of rimless glasses. A mediocre look can give a clumsy feel at first glance.

However, Eric did not despise this middle-aged man at all, because he had seen the other party's photo on the relevant materials more than once, this person is the current CEO of Nokia, Yoma Ollila, although the appearance is ordinary, but Yoma Ollila's resume is not mediocre at all, this person not only has a double master's degree in science and economics, but also served as a senior executive of Citibank in his early thirties, in the original time and space, Nokia was led by him from a company on the verge of bankruptcy to the global communication equipment hegemony.

"Eric, long time no see," Chris hugged Eric and quickly introduced him, "I think you know him, Mr. Yoma Ollilah." ”

Yoma Ollilah stepped forward and shook Eric's hand: "Mr. Williams, I'm Yoma Ollilah, it's a pleasure to meet you, I love your movie. ”

"Thanks, just call me Eric," Eric let go of Yoma Ollilah's hand, not paying attention to the slightly scrutinizing look in the other party's smile, and turned to greet the Firefly Investment Team team members that Chris had brought with him.

Everyone left the airport, Eric took Chris into his car, and as soon as the car started, Chris couldn't wait to open the suitcase he was carrying: "Eric, according to the information you sent back to New York, I once again asked people to evaluate Nokia......

Eric interrupted Chris and smiled and pointed to the car behind him, "You haven't told me about Yoma Ollilah yet, how could he come to Paris with you?"

Chris smiled, closed the suitcase for a moment, and said, "I almost picked him up from New York." ”

"I know Yoma Ollila went to Wall Street to invest in Nokiara, but it shouldn't be as bad as you say, right?"

"As far as I know, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley's major investment banks are not very interested in investing in Nokia, because the Boston Consulting Group publicly published a report more than a year ago, claiming that Nokia's mobile phone business is completely unable to compete with Motorola and Japanese mobile phone manufacturers, and finally Lehman Brothers, which has just gotten rid of the control of Amex, intends to invest, but Lehman Brothers itself is now very short of funds, and the conditions offered are relatively harsh, when I contacted Yola Ollila, he had been negotiating with the manager of the investment department of Lehman Brothers for a month, and he had not negotiated with the other party, from this point of view, this person is indeed very capableBut at the same time, he has become an obstacle to our acquisition of Nokia, and since he will not easily compromise with a giant like Lehman Brothers, it means that he will not easily compromise with us either. ”

Eric asked, "Did you get the content of his negotiations with Lehman Brothers?"

Chris nodded slyly, "Of course," he said, opening his suitcase, pulling out some papers and handing them to Eric.

The dispute between Yoma Ollila and Lehman Brothers focused on the size of the capital injection and the timing of the IPO, with Lehman Brothers initially agreeing to inject only $50 million but taking away 10% of Nokia's shares. Other than that. Lehman Brothers offered three years later to help Nokia go public. But Yoma Ollilah wants Lehman Brothers to go public directly and get development money from the stock market. ”

Eric read the documents in front of him and wondered: "What is he doing in a hurry to go public, if Nokia's development prospects are good, wouldn't it be possible to get more benefits if it goes public later?"

"I've had people analyze that," Chris explains, "and Nokia currently has the majority of its stake in a few Finnish banks, which means that Nokia has to make any major changes to its business." The need to obtain the permission of the shareholders of several banks has led to a situation in which Nokia's management has very little room for autonomy. But if Nokia could go public in North America, Nokia would become a mass-owned company, so that the management would have more room to play and only need to be accountable to the majority of shareholders, and no longer have to listen to the dictates of shareholders of several banks. ”

"At the end of the day, he's still going to want more power, right?"

Chris nodded, "Yes, so, when I first started with Yoma Ollilah. He wasn't too enthusiastic about investing in Firefly, and I was worried that he would suddenly come to a deal if he continued to talk to Lehman Brothers. I told him some information about Cisco, and he agreed to go back to Europe with me. ”

Firefly Investment, although it has dispersed Cisco's equity and hidden it in several investment funds, is still the largest shareholder of Cisco, but in addition to the necessary personnel and financial supervision of Cisco, Firefly Investment has not interfered much in the company's operations, and Eric understands that Yoma Ollila should have taken a fancy to this.

"Speaking of which, last week Cisco completed the merger of COC communications, expanding the Cisco business to the Catalyst5000 switch field, after this merger, our equity in our hands slipped to 31%, however, according to the stock price before the close of trading last Friday, Cisco's market value has now reached $5.3 billion, and the detailed information is still being sorted out by the headquarters, and it will be sent to your mailbox after completion, I just briefly told you. ”

Eric nodded to show that since the Clinton administration took office and announced the information superhighway plan, the stock prices of companies related to computer networks have risen rapidly for most of the past six months, and Cisco's stock price has more than doubled since the beginning of the year.

After Chris said this, he quickly took out a beautifully packaged gift box from his suitcase: "Now, the second thing, someone asked me to bring you a gift." ”

Eric didn't notice the evil smile on the corner of Chris's mouth, and opened the wrapping paper with some confusion, only to find that it was a 32-carat photo frame, in the photo, two chubby little guys were sitting on the sofa, the little boy stared at the camera with a pair of eyes a little blankly, and the little girl with eyebrows and eyes very similar to Joanna stretched out her little hand restlessly as if to grab something.

Eric saw the photo and remembered that the two little ones were born on April 10th, and the other day was the anniversary of the birth of the two little ones for three months, but he forgot about it, and he didn't call back for the past few days, it seems that Virginia must be very angry, so Chris asked Chris to bring him a 'gift'.

Chris said on the side: "Emily and I also went on the day of Kevin's baptism, I'm the godfather of the little guy now, I thought you must know, so I didn't inform you." The day before yesterday, Emily went to visit the two little ones and brought back this thing for me to bring to you, and I realized that you hadn't called back all these days. ”

Western children are generally baptized a few months after birth, Eric didn't expect Virginia to do it directly without consulting him, and smiled awkwardly, Eric realized something, and asked, "Kevin's baptism, what about Xia Xia?"

Chris spread his hands: "This should be something you and Joanna discussed," noticing Eric's confused expression, Chris said again: "Joanna is a Jew, Jews are mothers, traditionally speaking, Xia Xia should also be considered a Jew, in terms of blood, she can also be regarded as English, English generally believe in Christianity, so, let the little guy believe in which denomination, you and Joanna have to discuss." ”

Eric felt a little strange and muttered, "My daughter is Jewish." ”

After knowing each other for so long, Chris also realized that Eric is a very insensitive person to race, so he also knew that Eric did not mean discrimination in what he said just now, and said with a smile: "Yes, if you let Xia Xia take over your class in the future, it will definitely be very popular with Hollywood." ”

"It just feels a little weird," Eric laughed as well, "And what about you, Chris, what ethnicity is your family from?"

Chris said: "My family is a Norwegian immigrant who migrated from the Age of Discovery, and now it should be considered an American nation. ”

"Norway, I thought Hansen was a British surname," Eric laughed.

"The arrogance of the British in their bones," Chris teased, before explaining: "The surname Hansen means 'son of Hans' in a split statement, and if you read fairy tales, you will find that the name Hans often appears in Nordic fairy tales, and Norway is one of the five Nordic countries." ”

Eric put away the photos of the two little ones and said, "Okay, let's not talk about this for now, let's go back to Nokia." ”

Chris nodded, and took out a few documents from his suitcase: "This is some comparative tests that I commissioned Cisco's technical department to do, and the communication method adopted by Nokia completely suppressed most of the mobile communication equipment at this stage. Now the mainstream mobile phone uses analog signals, because the use of pulse signals, in the transmission process is very susceptible to interference resulting in distortion of call quality, in fact, many mobile communication equipment companies are studying new communication standards, and from the test results given by Cisco's technical department, Nokia's 1011 mobile phone uses the digital signal is very stable, this signal uses the same binary principle as the computer, and there is no distortion problem in the transmission process, so I think that if the GSM network used by Nokia can be promoted, it will cause a huge change in mobile communication equipmentIf you don't want our investment to be in vain, after the completion of the acquisition, the first thing we have to do is to lobby European countries to fully adopt the GSM system. ”

Eric said, "This seems to be something that will be done after the acquisition is completed, right?" (To be continued......)