What is called the unpredictable storm, if you take this sentence to Mick Zafilovsky, although he does not understand Chinese, he must be able to deeply understand the meaning.

It is as if no one wants to believe that Canada's Nortel network, which has a glorious history of 100 years, will be reduced to an embarrassing situation, as if there are still quite a few people in the company who are still living at the peak of the total market value of $267 billion.

Mick Zafilovski came to Nortel Networks from Motorola in 05, for which Nortel Networks paid him more than 10 million termination fees, and after he came to Nortel Networks, everything he did was to stop the decline of the company, but even if he tried his best, he still couldn't stop the decline of the company.

Perhaps the numbers can better describe the current bad situation of Nortel Networks, because their total market value has fallen from $267 billion in UU years to more than $10 billion now, and the company's value has shrunk by more than 20 times.

But this was achieved when the company sold off a lot of its properties, for example, they took the business to 3. It was sold to Alcatel for $100 million, which took them out of the market altogether.

Nortel's decline comes not only from business and external competition, but also from within the company, such as the financial fraud scandal in 2003, which not only caused the Toronto Stock Exchange to plummet, but also forced Nortel Networks to reach a settlement agreement with the shareholders who sued them at the end of the UU year, but for which the company had to pay. $500 million.

As the so-called roof leak happened to rain overnight, Mick Zafilovsky can now deeply feel this helplessness.

But what makes him feel even more helpless is that the world has completely changed, whether it is the once giant Nortel Network, or the mobile phone industry giant Motorola, the situation in the past two years has been telling him a cruel reality, that is, the future will no longer belong to them.

But will it be his future?

Mick Zafilovsky looked at the black-haired, yellow-skinned young Chinese, the fastest rising super-rich man in the world in the past few years, who created some of the most well-known websites on the Internet and developed a mobile phone that was claimed to be revolutionary in the field of communications, which brought him and his company amazing profits.

And all this has only happened in less than three or four years.

There is a serious generation gap, that's for sure, because Mick Zafilovski asked people to investigate this Chinese named Ye Qiu, who knows the way, does not know the way, only to find out that he is still the most famous football club manager in the world at the moment, and has a professional team in Europe that plays in the Premier League and the Champions League.

For this reason, he also made up some European football knowledge, hoping that he could have a little more common topics with him.

Now everyone knows that the road is on the leaf technology, it is equivalent to hugging a thigh that can not be thicker, this company now has nearly 10 billion US dollars in cash, if all the money is transferred to Nortel network, then all the difficulties and troubles will be solved, but the problem is that the money is people's

"Mr. Ye Qiu, thank you very much for coming to Toronto from Europe in your busy schedule" Mick Zafilovsky looks young, in his thirties, a little chubby, but very energetic, but in fact he is in his fifties.

The Macedonian American has a very illustrious resume, he worked at General Electric for twenty-four years and held very important positions, he joined the Motorola mobile phone division as president in 20000, and in 05 he came to Nortel Networks under the poaching of $1.5 million in compensation.

His resume has witnessed his ability, and also witnessed a very realistic situation, that is, he does not have much affection for Nortel Network, for him, Nortel Network is just a new step for him to change jobs, but now this step seems to be sinking.

"Mr. Zafilovsky, I believe my colleague" Ye Qiu looked at Eliza Moon sitting next to him, as well as Shirley Sandberg, COO of Leaf Technology, and other senior executives of Leaf Technology, they are all behind this acquisition, and Leaf Technology has been preparing for more than half a year in order to get to this point.

"I have had very in-depth exchanges with you, and I also believe that you know better than anyone about the current situation of Nortel's network, and now you only have two ways to go, first, let the Canadian government provide support funds, but I believe that with the deterioration of the financial situation of Nortel's network, this road has become impassable."

Nortel Network is not without valuable assets, on the contrary, many of the company's assets that are coveted by the outside world, or some assets that have not been paid attention to by the outside world, are very valuable, but the problem is that they have no cash.

For a company of this size, running out of cash is a pretty scary thing.

Ye Qiu's current situation is just the opposite, Ye Qiu now has nearly 10 billion US dollars in cash in the company's account alone, and he himself has billions of euros in cash in Swiss banks, which is enough for him to easily complete the acquisition he wants.

Ye Qiu had made full preparations before, and Eliza personally handled this plan, because this is related to the future development of Ye Technology, if it succeeds, Ye Technology will take off, and if it fails, Ye Technology will continue to be controlled by others in the next few years.

"The second point, I believe, is what you told my team earlier, selling the company's assets."

Mick Zafilovsky nodded, "Yes, Mr. Ye Qiu." ”

He has to admit that the first road is not going through, and the second way is to drink doves to quench his thirst, but everything has to be looked at this way, if you don't sell, it won't take long, half a year sooner or later, two years if you are slow, Nortel will still have to go bankrupt sooner or later, but if you sell, you can still buy some time, maybe there is still room to turn around.

In fact, Mick Zafilovsky has already made his idea public at the company's board of directors, he wants to sell the wireless business, because this is a money-losing goods, but a lot of research and development funds are invested every year, and at the same time, he does not rule out the sale of the fiber optic network and Ethernet business with an annual revenue of 100 million yuan, he is the most valuable business of Nortel Networks.

Zafilovsky wants to concentrate on enterprise networking and carrier services, and several of the top companies in the optical network business, such as Nokia Siemens, Ericsson, Huawei, and ZTE, are interested in this part of Nortel's network.

Ye Technology is eyeing nearly 9,000 patents held by Nortel Network.

As a rising star, Ye Technology can be described as poor and white in patents, even in the process of developing Zeus mobile phones, it has applied for a lot of patents, but not to mention that it is compared with giants such as Nokia and Motorola, even if it is compared with opponents like Apple and Microsoft, Ye Technology is lagging behind and I don't know how much.

Is there any way to get enough patents for Leaf Technology in the shortest possible time?

acquisition, and the more than 8,000 patents in the hands of Nortel Network are a big cake in Ye Qiu's eyes, and the most terrible thing is that this big cake is not familiar to anyone now, and even his owner, Nortel Network itself does not realize his value and how much role he can play in the future.

This is also related to the R&D principles that Nortel Networks has always believed in, for example, Nortel Networks developed a concept mobile phone with many functions of Zeus mobile phones as early as 1990, which shows the company's R&D and innovation capabilities, and even they applied for a lot of patents for this, but in the end they failed to make mobile phones.

And the company has always believed in a defensive principle when it comes to patents, that is, it does not take the initiative to file lawsuits through patents.

For example, they have an agreement with Nokia Siemens to use each other's patents, which means that they are only applying for patents so that they will not be sued, or to share each other's patents with each other, rather than using them against their opponents.

Now Microsoft, Apple, and even Google have not done anything to Leaf Technology, but this does not mean that Leaf Technology does not have a handle in their hands, because high-tech things, especially smartphones, really want to fight a patent war, which is a very easy thing, because there are so many components and software programs in a mobile phone, there will always be problems.

Wait until the other party realizes this and launches a patent war, then there is no patent in the hands of Ye Technology, so you can only be slaughtered, the more you sell now, the more you will lose in the future, so they don't do it to you now, and they are happy to see you sell well, and when they feel that the time is ripe, they will directly launch a patent war to share most of your profits, and there is no cost.

Nortel Networks is a very interesting company, and they very much encourage engineers and technicians to apply for patents, so they have accumulated more than 8,000 patents covering a wide range of fields such as dG, PI, voice, optics, Ethernet, Internet, semiconductors, etc., without realizing the value of these patents.

So much so that later, Nortel Network went bankrupt, and Google announced that it would acquire the patents in their hands for $900 million, but soon, Microsoft, Apple and other companies also formed an alliance to snipe, and the two sides kept raising prices, and Google even increased from 900 million to 4.4 billion, but in the end, the alliance between Microsoft and Apple completed the bid with $4.5 billion.

Ye Qiu knew that this matter was because before he crossed, Apple and Microsoft were fighting patent wars everywhere, even if Google had acquired Motorola at a high price, it was still passively beaten everywhere, and then Apple and Microsoft were targeting Samsung, HTC and other mobile phone manufacturers, hoping to use patent wars to defeat competitors in one fell swoop

It can be seen how amazing the value of this batch of patents is.

Originally, in Ye Qiu's opinion, the acquisition of this huge patent of Nortel Networks, as well as their wireless and voice business and R&D department, should cost a lot of money, but according to the information given by Eliza Moon, it seems that this is not the case, and they don't seem to realize the value of the patent until now.

Of course, Ye Qiu didn't know what to do, in fact, Nortel Networks noticed the value of patents only when they restructured their business after they declared bankruptcy, and then streamlined more than 8,000 patents into more than 6,000 and put them up for public bidding.

Now, the most valuable department of Nortel Network is only about 2 billion, or even more than 1 billion can be traded, which shows that in their planning, wireless business is not the focus, their focus is on operators and enterprise networks.

But what's interesting is that Qualcomm, as a leading enterprise in mobile phone chips in the future, must pay them patents, which shows that if you get the company's patents, it will be a huge supplement to Ye Technology, and it will make Ye Technology one of the companies with the largest patent pool.

And with strong enough patents, Samsung and other mobile phone manufacturers, and even some hardware manufacturers, including Qualcomm, must rely more closely on Leaf Technology, otherwise, patents are a sword of Damos above their heads, and this will completely lay a solid foundation for Leaf Technology.

Ye Qiu made a special trip from Europe because Nortel Network wanted to sell, Ye Technology wanted to buy, but there were some differences in the price between the two sides, Nortel Network wanted to sell the business, but they also wanted to raise the price, and Ye Technology took the opportunity to reduce the price, but Ye Qiu had to avoid a contradiction committed by Google in his previous life

At that time, Google launched an acquisition of 900 million, but the two sides had some disagreements on the price, and then the more they talked, the more eye-catching they became, and even attracted the intervention of Apple and Microsoft, which finally made Nortel Network aware of the price of these patents, so it directly gave up the negotiation and chose to bid publicly, and finally the price rose all the way to 4.5 billion US dollars

The current Nortel network is mainly at an asking price of about 900 million US dollars, and Ye Technology hopes to get it for 600 million, and it is impossible for Zafilovsky to sell all the relevant patents to Ye Technology, after all, some patents are involved in some of their other businesses, so it is impossible to sell them all, and in the end it is more than 7,000 yuan.

With the scope of the negotiation, the price entanglement immediately began, and both sides also showed their own negotiation skills, Ye Zi Technology's side was dominated by Eliza Moon, Ye Qiu was listening the rest of the time except for the beginning, until more than three hours had passed, and the negotiations between the two sides were a bit deadlocked, and he spoke again.

"700 million, in addition to the ownership of these patents we listed, as well as the relevant R&D departments and personnel of your company, I also hope to get the permanent right to use the rest of the patents" Ye Qiu intends to kill it directly.

Eliza Moon and Shirley Sandberg, who were sitting next to him, were a little surprised, and directly raised the price by 100 million, which is too anxious, right? After all, time is now in Leaf Technology's favor

They are right to think so, but Ye Qiu has his own worries, that is, once other competitors realize the purpose of Ye Technology, they will definitely snipe, not to mention hundreds of millions at that time, you have more than a dozen billions, dozens of billions, you have to get it, otherwise you will always be controlled by others.

Sure enough, Mick Zafilovsky is also a cunning leader, as soon as he saw that Ye Qiu was not grinding slowly like other high-level executives of Ye Technology, but taking a more anxious attitude to complete the acquisition as soon as possible, he immediately knew that there was a play, but he didn't want to scare off this big customer, so he thought about it for a while and proposed: "Mr. Ye Qiu, we can agree to your request, but the price, we still ask for nine hundred million dollars"

Shirley Sandberg knew Ye Qiu's thoughts, and also knew the importance of winning Nortel Network to Ye Technology, but he felt that if he continued to grind, it would be beneficial to the company, and the price would not be so high, so he had to speak out and express his opinion.

But at this moment, Eliza Moon gently pulled her and shook her head, she knew Ye Qiu too well, this is a guy who can't afford to be unprofitable, if it wasn't really necessary, he couldn't have behaved so generously, the only explanation was that he felt that these patents and R&D personnel were indeed worth so much money.

After hearing this, Ye Qiu pondered for a while, raised his head, looked at Zafilovsky again, and smiled, "Mr. Zafilovsky, I came to Toronto with very strong sincerity, but this does not mean that I am a person who likes to bargain with others, on the contrary, people who are familiar with me know that I have no patience." ”

When he said this, Ye Qiu put his hands on the table, his eyes stared at Zafilovsky, he felt the need to put some pressure on this American, "Please believe that this is the last time I have made an offer, and it is also the last time our company has made an offer, 800 million US dollars, I hope you can think about it again."

Even two or three years later, when the patent war has completely started and everyone realizes the value of patents, Google's first offer is only 900 million, and now Ye Qiu has given 800 million, which is already very sincere.

But if you consider the future, you can get some core patents in chips, semiconductors, networks, voice services, etc., then this acquisition is very valuable.

Of course, now Ye Qiu has to put on a show that I have already cut my flesh and sold my blood, and if you insist on the price, I can only withdraw from the negotiations.

Mick Zafilovsky was willing to negotiate, which showed that he had been authorized and recognized by the board of directors, and I believe that they already had a psychological price, and Ye Qiu was sure that there was absolutely no 800 million, so after listening to Ye Qiu's words, Zafilovsky looked at the other members of the negotiation team around him, and after getting the hint, he nodded towards Ye Qiu.

"Hope we can have a good time together"

Ye Qiu stretched out his hand and shook Zafilovsky, "I hope so, too"

At this point, everyone breathed a sigh of relief, and the negotiations, which lasted for more than four hours, were finally over.

The whole negotiation process finally ended with Ye Qiu's final word, Ye Technology got more than 7,000 patents from Nortel Networks at a price of 800 million US dollars, and also got a huge R&D team, but this does not mean that everything is over.

Three days after the end of the negotiations, the two parties formally signed the acquisition agreement.

This news was like a bombshell, which immediately detonated completely in North America, and also surprised everyone with the big deal of Leaf Technology, and because Shirley Sandberg had previously carried out public relations on the government through her own connections, the government did not make it difficult for this acquisition, but directly passed.

So far, Yezi Technology has completely changed from the original patent weakness to a patent powerhouse, especially in the patent technology of smart phones, the Internet, etc., which has surpassed Google and Apple, and even Google's search, application framework and cloud network may face patent litigation from Yezi Technology.

It is also at this moment that Ye Technology can be regarded as truly becoming a strong player qualified to enter the ranks of top high-tech companies.

But the acquisition of Nortel Networks is just the beginning.