After Mayer left, Eric simply packed up and returned to East 75th Street from work with the paperwork and packages that the female assistant had just handed him. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

Cindy had also gone home and was taking a shower, and the door was opened by the personal assistant named Catherine Neumann, whom she had recently hired.

Considering that Cindy was in dire need of someone to take care of her, Eric focused on having several girls she liked first, and in the end, only the German girl in front of her with neat short ear-length hair met the requirements.

Catherine Neumann is just 24 years old from Frankfurt, Germany's industrial powerhouse.

As with the image of the German, Eric could almost see a sense of meticulousness in Katherine Neumann's resume. After graduating from high school, she received a full scholarship from Harvard University to study in the United States, and in six years, she received a bachelor's degree in economics, a bachelor's degree in psychology and a master's degree in business administration from Harvard.

At the same time, in addition to German and English, Katherine Neumann is fluent in French and Spanish.

And, in addition to her knowledge, the girl is impeccable in her dealings with people.

If there is a downside, perhaps the girl comes from a single-parent family. Cindy doesn't care about this, and accuses Eric of bias, and counters the fact that he himself grew up in a single-parent family.

To be sure, Eric had always felt that the original owner of the body had left him with a number of character flaws. But since Cindy herself was satisfied, Eric agreed.

After entering the door, Eric handed the folder and package in his hand to the girl, and said while changing his shoes: "The folder is in the living room, I will look at it after taking a shower, the package will be delivered to my study, is it ready for dinner?"

Katherine Neumann took what Eric had in his hand and nodded, "It's already ready, Mr. Williams, is there anything else you need in particular?"

Eric had been asking for nothing special to eat, shook his head casually, and asked Linda when she would be back, and then went to the bathroom where Cindy was bathing. knocked on the door of the room, reminded the woman who likes to take a bath not to soak for too long, and changed to another bathroom to shower.

It's the hottest time of the year in New York, and although you spend most of your time indoors in an air-conditioned room, you still inevitably sweat a lot at the end of the day.

After simply taking a shower and changing his clothes, Eric came to the living room refreshed, sat on the sofa and flipped through the NASDAQ market analysis report he brought back.

In the third week after the crash, as of 4 p.m. today, the Nasdaq index has fallen back to 3,056 points, which is another 13.3% drop from last week.

Although the decline began to narrow, in just three weeks, the Nasdaq index has returned to the level of four months ago. Compared with the peak of 5,000 points, the Nasdaq as a whole plummeted by 40%, and the wealth of the entire Nasdaq stock market of more than $3 trillion was wiped out.

Specific to the firefly system.

Yahoo's stock price continued to fall 19.1% this week, and its market capitalization has fallen back to $134.9 billion. Compared with the peak of 257.9 billion US dollars, it has almost halved. It is conceivable that if no action is taken, Yahoo's market capitalization could fall back below $100 billion next week.

In recent days, Yahoo has negotiated an agreement with Microsoft, backed by the leverage in Eric's hands.

After next week's high-level gathering, the entire Firefly system will also announce a series of measures to boost the stock prices of its new technology companies to avoid an unrestricted decline in the stock prices of companies such as Yahoo.

As he was reading the document in his hand, a fragrant breeze came from beside him, and Eric kissed Cindy on the face of the sitting side, and said, "It's been so hot in the past few days, you don't have to run to the set of "American Top Model", our little guy is the most important." ”

"Of course I do, but it feels like it's always going to be a problem when you're at home," Cindy snuggled up to Eric, glancing at the papers in his hand, "How much has it fallen this week?"

"At 13.3%, the downward trend has slowed down, but the situation is still very unoptimistic. ”

Cindy nodded, her body moved, and said, "Eric, I want to discuss something with you?"

Listening to Cindy's serious tone, Eric also sat up straight and asked, "What's wrong?"

"Didn't you just buy that girl an agency recently?"

"Just wanted her to learn something," Eric explained softly, then came to his senses and smiled, "You want to buy one too?"

Cindy nodded and said, "IMG." ”

Eric was a little surprised: "IMG-Models or IMG-World? Besides, this company should be running very well, how can it be sold to you?"

IMG's full name is actually International-Management-Group, and Cindy's IMG-Models is just one of the subsidiaries of the entire IMG-World Group.

Although the overall strength is stronger than Elite, IMG is also not a listed company. And, even if he hadn't paid much attention to it, Eric knew that the company was doing so well that shareholders couldn't suddenly want to sell it for no reason.

"Of course, it's the entire IMG group, and I don't have the intention of forcibly buying someone else's company, it's the majority shareholder of IMG who took the initiative to contact me," Cindy saw Eric's thoughts, and took the man's arm to explain, "IMG's founder, Mark McCormack's family, still owns 55% of the company's shares. However, although Mark McCormack has been the chairman of IMG Group, he has rarely asked about the company's specific affairs over the years because of heart problems, and his children have no intention of inheriting IMG. ”

"Then there's no need to sell it, what's more, how could they want to sell it to you?"

"Because of this stock market crash," Cindy said, "McCormack's two sons lost more than $100 million a few months ago when they mortgaged their family's IMG shares to buy technology stocks. Recently, the situation was very bad, the bank began to collect the arrears from them, and it is said that the elder McCormack was so angry that he rescued him once, but he still had to agree to transfer the shares of IMG Group, otherwise he would be forced to auction by the bank. ”

Hearing Cindy say this, Eric finally understood.

In fact, in recent times, the number of billionaires and the average middle class in the world has lost all their money because of the collapse of the Nasdaq.

Tiger Fund, which Eric has been keeping an eye on, fell into huge losses again with the collapse of the Nasdaq as Julian Robertson switched his shorting strategy to buy tech stocks in the last few months.

At this time, the total remaining capital of the Tiger Fund was less than $5 billion, a plunge of nearly 80% from its peak two years ago.

Suffering huge losses of this magnitude, Tiger Fund was doomed to be unsustainable, and Julian Roberts had to begin liquidating the long-established hedge fund that was about to become history, returning the remaining capital to investors.

In addition, Eric has just received a handwritten letter from Walt Disney's daughter Diane Disney Miller in recent days, asking Firefly Group to donate a sum of money to the Los Angeles Disney Concert Hall under construction, so that the project will not be halted due to a broken funding chain.

The Disney Concert Hall was built with a $50 million donation from the Disney family, but the Disney Concert Hall project has been overspent over the years, and the Los Angeles County Government even issued government bonds to raise funds.

Eric learned from Katzenberg that the Disney family had intended to continue to invest $25 million in Disney concert halls.

But again, because the Disney family suffered heavy losses in the stock market crash, it was difficult for the other party to come up with another $25 million in cash, so they could only turn to the Firefly Group, which owns the Disney brand, for help.

Although he is often criticized by relevant parties, in fact, Eric has never wanted to downplay the Disney brand. On the contrary, Eric wants to downplay the Firefly brand so that the whole Firefly system is no longer so eye-catching, but this is obviously unrealistic.

Although Disney Concert Hall is primarily a public welfare project of the Disney family, it is also good for maintaining the Disney brand. $25 million is not a lot for the Firefly Group, and the public welfare donation can also offset some of the taxes, so Eric readily agreed.

Tiger Fund, the Disney family, and Linda's $50 million investment in technology stocks that are still in their hands are just the most intuitive microcosm of the investment market that has been full of grief after the collapse of the Nasdaq market.

It can be said that all investors who couldn't help but lure into the market in the last few months of the Nasdaq bubble ended up in the red.

After several weeks of sharp declines, it is impossible for these investors to sell their stocks at a low price, because no one dares to take over now, so they can only watch the original valuable technology stocks gradually become waste paper.

Of course, there will still be people who ask, where does the money go when so many people lose money?

To put it simply, the most lucrative amount of money must have been earned by the listed company during the IPO process.

One may notice that many IPOs rise by more than 100%, which seems to mean that listed companies are making less money than investors, but this is not the case. Because the stock profits after the IPO are distributed to many investors, and they are scattered, there is definitely no investor who can get more than the listed company.

Then, everyone starts beating the drum and passing the flowers, if the stock price goes all the way up, then all the players who pass the 'flowers' in advance can basically make a profit, until the last unlucky ghost.

Moreover, if in the process of passing flowers, some players who originally profited did not hold back their greed and took some bouquets again. Then, when the stock market crashes, there will be a large number of unlucky ghosts.

The current situation of the Nasdaq market is that of a large number of unlucky ghosts, and a small group of investors who are secretly rejoicing after escaping the stock market crash.

As for the Clover Fund, that's a complete outlier.

After all, no equity fund has made such a big entry into the market as Eric did.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that due to the crazy burning of money by new technology companies in recent years, the most lucrative money they have obtained from IPOs has also begun to gradually deplete. It can be said that, in addition to laying a scattered and messy foundation for the entire information industry, at the capital level, there are not many winners in this new technology bubble.

At this time, in the living room, although realizing that the McCormack family was mainly coming for him this time, Eric still asked Cindy, "So, how much do they offer?"

"$750 million," Cindy knew that Eric must have understood, and no longer hid it, "In recent years, IMG's net profit has been more than $100 million, and according to normal valuation, IMG can sell at least $1.5 billion." So, the McCormack's offer is reasonable. I've discussed it with Linda, she still has $100 million over there, I'll count 200 million here, and you'll have to pay for the rest. ”

With $750 million to control one of the world's largest talent agencies, Eric is still very excited.

Due to some lessons learned from investing in UTA, Eric had conducted a detailed legal risk assessment before taking a stake in WM this time, and concluded that the plan was feasible.

Speaking of which, the bill on the separation of agencies and production companies is also limited to Hollywood film and television productions. Moreover, the reason for the emergence of relevant bills is mainly the result of lobbying by the two major actors' unions in Hollywood.

But outside of Hollywood, neither the music industry nor the fashion industry has a group organization as powerful as the screen actors' union, and the federal government will naturally not take the risk of offending capital to take the initiative to introduce relevant regulations.

As a result, singers in the music industry are basically still signed artists to record production companies.

As for the modeling industry, there are no restrictions, and many models are simply employees of agencies with fixed salaries, just like in the era of Hollywood's big studios.

Moreover, an international talent agency like IMG Group itself integrates agency brokerage, program production and film and television distribution, the only difference is that the target of IMG's agency is not actors, but supermodels, sports stars and even pop singers.

Cindy kept staring at Eric's expression and waited patiently for a while before whispering, "Eric, what's going on?"

Eric nodded, and said: "750 million US dollars, after all, is not a small amount, I must at least see some information about IMG Group first, right?"

"I'm ready," Cindy saw that Eric's tone was relaxed, and immediately got up and took out a thick file bag from the shelf next to the living room and handed it over, "Now, Linda and I have already seen it." ”

Eric scratched his finger on the file bag and said with a smile: "IMG took the initiative to send it, aren't you afraid that they will lie to you?"

"Of course not," Cindy subconsciously glanced at the kitchen, unable to see a figure with short hair, "We collected it ourselves, and it will definitely not be a problem." ”

"Okay, I'll take a look at it in the next two days, and then let the legal department do an assessment, and if it's okay, you can get in touch with the McCormack family next week. ”