Eric and Chris spent a few hours agreeing on a detailed plan for absorbing Disney stock from the secondary market, Chris put away the handwritten memo, and when he saw that Eric was about to leave, he suddenly remembered another thing and stopped him: "Eric, there's another thing I almost forgot to mention." ”

After Eric sat down again, Chris said, "In August, the Cisco Board of Directors passed a resolution to remove the founders Gray and his wife from all positions at Cisco, and the two have now left the company. ”

Chris said, got up and took out a paper clip from the cabinet and handed it to Eric, Eric opened it and looked at it, it was a resolution of the Cisco board of directors in mid-August, after reading it, Eric raised his head and asked, "What's going on?"

"Mr. and Mrs. Gray felt that the current Cisco management was too profit-seeking and not in line with their original purpose for creating Cisco, and they had a lot of trouble about it, and I happened to run into one when I went to the Cisco mid-year meeting in June, and the couple pointed at the nose of the company's CEO, Morgan Rich, and scolded the company's CEO, Morgan Rich, and the meeting was postponed for three hours. In August, the company's management threatened the board with a mass resignation, eventually firing the Gray in all their positions at Cisco. ”

Briefly recounting the whole thing, Chris said with a faint contempt on his face: "In fact, the reason why they are like this has little to do with the company's business strategy, and the couple are just angry about losing the control of Cisco." ”

"I know about this, and unless it threatens our interests, we try not to interfere in Cisco's management. ”

Chris nodded, "I understand." But what I'm going to say is the next thing, after Mr. and Mrs. Gray left Cisco, they revealed that they were going to sell their stocks, and I think you might be interested, and it just so happens that we have enough money right now. ”

Eric recalls Cisco's equity division.

With an excited look, after Cisco went public, the Creators Gray and his wife held Cisco 27 in their hands.

With a 6% stake, it is still the largest shareholder of Cisco, while Sequoia Capital, which originally invested in Cisco, owns 23.

5% of the shares, ranking second.

The third is Firefly Investments, with a 23% stake, and the remaining nearly 30% of the shares are scattered among institutional investors and the company's management.

Although it is a listed company, because the market is not optimistic about Cisco's development prospects at the time of listing, most of the shares offered by Cisco are only subscribed by investment institutions.

The shares flowing into the secondary market are very scarce, and the plan to absorb and increase holdings in the circulation market will not work at all, and the investors who have already obtained the shares are not willing to sell them lightly because of Cisco's good performance after listing, so the sale of the shares in the hands of the Gray couple must be the only opportunity to increase their holdings of Cisco shares on a large scale.

If they can take all the shares in the hands of the Gray couple, Firefly Investment is almost equivalent to an absolute controlling stake in Cisco.

It's something Eric dreams of.

"How much do they offer?"

Eric asked the most crucial question directly, with a sense of ambition in his tone.

Chris can also understand what Eric is thinking, as a manager of Firefly Investments.

He knew Cisco's situation better than Eric, shook his head and smiled: "Eric, maybe you are going to be disappointed, the Gray couple did not want to sell all the shares in their hands, they are only willing to sell two-thirds of the shares, about 18%. Offer 2. $500 million, 30% higher than the market price. So now most of the interested investors are negotiating with the Grays, and I estimate that the final transaction price will not exceed 200 million. ”

"As far as I can get in touch with Mr. and Mrs. Gray. We must take this share, we have enough funds now anyway, and it doesn't matter if it's a little more expensive,"

Eric thought for a moment, and then said, "In this case, you tell the Gray couple that if they are willing to sell their entire shares, we will buy them at a premium of 30 percent." ”

"I'll pass it on, but it's unlikely, if it weren't for the couple's need for funds to start a business again, it is estimated that the 18% of the shares would not be sold. ”

"Try it and you won't lose anything,"

Eric nodded.

#艾瑞克再次来到纽约的这几天, the international crude oil price reached an unprecedented high of $41 per barrel, and almost in the same few days, Western countries and several major oil exporting countries in the Middle East began to introduce various measures to effectively stabilize the price of crude oil, first of all, Saudi Arabia announced that it would increase its domestic crude oil production capacity to 100% to meet market demand, North America and European countries also began to use their own crude oil reserves to stabilize the market, plus the United States led by the United States * In the Persian Gulf, all the troops have been fully deployed, the total number of troops has exceeded 600,000, and Iraq has been comprehensively suppressed in terms of weapons and equipment.

Even Eric himself could not have imagined that the chances of his next trip to New York would be so coincidental, just in time for the decline in crude oil prices after peaking.

Therefore, after returning to Los Angeles again, all kinds of temptations came again, without exception, to spy on the benefits of his oil crisis.

In the process of operating crude oil futures this time, up to 500 million US dollars of principal was temporarily borrowed from the seven major film companies, and the seven major companies finally received nothing but borrowing money and a dispensable interest.

Therefore, some people want to know how much money their money has earned very strongly, and it seems that as long as they know the result, these people's hearts will be appeased.

Of course, Eric couldn't reveal specific information to stimulate those people, he couldn't do such an inhumane thing, and when encountering such temptations, Eric would often avoid the topic in a few words.

As a result, some people have turned their attention to the movements of Eric's companies, hoping to get some information from them.

But time passed, and in addition to the plans revealed by some employees of Firefly about the Preavista shooting base, only Firefly Investment announced that it would take 2.

Other than the $100 million acquisition of an 18% stake in the hands of Cisco founders Mr. and Mrs. Gray, Eric doesn't seem to have made much move.

Although Eric claimed to invest $1 billion in negotiations with Preavista community officials, anyone with a discerning eye could see that it was impossible for Preavista's filming base to cost that much money, not to mention that the project would take several years to invest, with the first batch of up to $100 million.

This kind of quiet petty fight made many people feel a little more at ease, and they comforted themselves to guess that Eric probably didn't make much money.

As October slowly passes, Hollywood is about to usher in the New Year's file at the end of the year again, and the big film companies have begun to promote the main films at the end of the year.

And Firefly has only two films released at the end of the year, in addition to "Shocking Point", and Robert.

Another film produced by Shay, "Ghost Detective", this work has a bit of a thriller comedy style that imitates "Ghostbusters", it is a film that Eric has never heard of, it is estimated that it is an anomaly brought about by the butterfly effect, and the investment in the film has also reached 40 million, according to Robert.

Shay's previous agreement with Eric saw Fireflies account for a quarter of the investment.

And Firefly's "Home Alone" series, which has been the main hit for two consecutive years, did not make a sequel this year.

Mainly because Stewart's CAA agency proposed a sky-high salary of $15 million, almost double that of last year, and the Runkels seem to have 'opened up' this time, did not interfere wantonly, and handed over the salary negotiations to the CAA.

If you accept the salary proposed by the CAA, plus the price increase of the other leading actors in the movie, the cost of forcing the sequel to be paid alone will reach 25 million, and the total cost of the sequel will exceed 50 million, plus the marketing budget in the later stage, the film needs 1.

400 million box office to recover the cost, according to the box office downward trend of the first two films, there is a great possibility that this sequel will come out to lose money, Eric did not think too much about it, and temporarily cut the sequel production plan.

On the day of the news that Firefly would suspend the "Home Alone" series, Stewart's agent immediately called to make concessions, but Eric, who was busy with futures trading at the time, had no intention of arguing with CAA again and directly rejected the other party.

Fireflies are not as strict as some film companies that rely on a certain movie series, so they don't need to be too accommodating to the main creators of the movie.

"Shocking Point" closed in mid-October, and it is expected to take a month to complete the post-production, but these days, Eric is not going to Catherine.

Bigelow got around because of Cameron and Linda.

Hamilton's affair was caught by the paparazzi and was in the newspaper with a photo.

Catherine rushed to the filming site of "Terminator 2" in New Mexico on the day the news was revealed, and after Cameron personally admitted that he had cheated, the woman simply divorced Cameron neatly, without any drag.

But Cameron is not one of those unmarried directors after all, as a married man had an affair with the heroine, it is rumored that it is likely to affect the box office of "Terminator 2", so the two agreed to wait for the release of "Terminator 2" before announcing the news of divorce.

Although this matter has been hidden from the media for the time being, there are many people who know about it, and Eric, as an investor in the two films, is of course impossible not to know.

As a very independent woman, Catherine.

Bigelow didn't marry each other until he was 35 years old because of his admiration for Cameron's talent, but he didn't expect that this marriage lasted less than three years, and her husband cheated, which is probably difficult for any woman to accept.

Although Catherine was still calm and meticulous at work during this time, and did not seem to be affected by the breakdown of her marriage, when Eric appeared, the woman's gaze occasionally became gloomy, looking at him with a kind of eyes that all men in the world should be fried, this feeling made Eric feel cold down his spine, and he was unwilling to bear the blame for the bad things that Cameron had made, so he simply let go of the "Shock Point" thing for the time being.

(To be continued)