Unlike sunny Los Angeles and drizzling Seattle, New York is still in the coldest part of the year.

Winters are short.

Simon arrived on the East Coast and rushed from JFK Airport to his Fifth Avenue apartment, and it was already dark.

Janet was not alone in the apartment, Sophia Faisy had also arrived from Europe yesterday.

While Simon continues to work, Janet and many others around her are busy preparing for their wedding in early March.

The wedding has been confirmed to be held in Melbourne, the guest list has been preliminarily finalized, and the Johnston family has specially prepared several charter flights for this purpose.

Sophia came to New York for the wedding dress, and the Gucci design team was busy designing the wedding dress after Simon and Janet's wedding date was confirmed.

Last night, Jane was asked to discuss the wedding dress style until the early hours of the morning, and Simon still woke up early the next day.

I fumbled for my watch and looked at it, and it was still 6:50 a.m. on the East Coast.

The woman in her arms noticed Simon's movements, rubbed and wrapped around him tighter, and opened her small mouth to bite the man's shoulder in her sleep, and then stopped moving again.

Feeling Janet's obsession, Simon dismissed the idea of getting up and closed his eyes again.

Winter is indeed a good season for laziness.

When I woke up again, it was almost nine o'clock in the morning, and Janet was no longer around.

Simon opens the curtains of his bedroom after dressing and washing, and the bleak Central Park is sprinkled with the soft sunlight that is unique to this season, pale and weak, and seems to be equally reluctant.

At least it was a sunny day.

Downstairs, Janet and Sophia had just prepared breakfast, and when they saw Simon, Janet leaned over and kissed the man, saying, "I was saying that I was going to wake you up." ”

Simon hugged the woman and said good morning, said hello to Sophia, and sat down at the table.

Sophia brought breakfast and put a few copies of today's newspaper in Simon's hand, then sat down, and talked about Gucci during the meal, and the fashion week in February was coming soon, and the housekeeper was not idle during this time, and she would return to Europe tomorrow.

After breakfast, Sophia rushed to Gucci's U.S. headquarters, Simon and Janet had no work plans today, and they were tired of enjoying the world of two in their apartment.

“...... I've got people ready to get ready, and that day at Yarra Valley Park we'll be building a maze of flowers around our wedding venue, and all kinds of flowers will be beautiful......

In a living room on the second floor of a duplex apartment, Janet was holding a thick folder containing various wedding planning materials and talking to Simon.

Looking at the woman's flushed face when she said this, Simon smiled: "Don't women have premarital phobia? ”

Janet affectionately slapped Simon sideways and said, "Only a woman who doubts whether she has met the right man will have premarital phobia, and I don't." ”

Hearing this, Simon smiled and kissed Janet's smooth face, a little unsatisfied, and reached out to hug the woman again.

Janet was quick to respond.

The two were entangled for a moment, and soon turned into a picture that was inappropriate for children.

Tired of the whole day in the apartment, Sophia didn't come back to bother them in the evening, and the next day was Monday, and still had to continue to work.

On Saturday morning, Sheila Wood was unclear about Simon's speech at the meeting of the Arab Cooperation Council, so the Cersei Capital team in New York began to lay out the oil futures market in advance based on this news and many recent trends in mainstream countries in Europe and the United States.

With hedge funds booming in the last two years, Cersei Capital is not alone in its eyes on the oil futures market.

However, in response to Saddam's statement, many hedge funds believe that international oil prices will begin to rise in the next period of time, while Cersei Capital is betting that oil prices will fall.

In Simon's memory, because Saddam Hussein had expressed his 'non-cooperation' posture with the West since last year, and because the United States was in power by the Bush family, a family with close ties to various oil majors, the European and American oil groups finally decided to take action against Iraq.

The first step was not war, but Iraq's domestic economy, which had become increasingly vulnerable since the Iran-Iraq war.

Iraq's economy is so dependent on oil that the best way to hit the country's fragile domestic economy is to push international oil prices down.

Therefore, countries such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, which have close ties with European and American oil groups, will take the form of substantial production increases to lower international oil prices in the next few months, which is also the most direct reason for Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

Before the Kuwaiti War, the price of international crude oil plummeted from $19 in early 1990 to $13 in just a few months, a drop of more than 30%.

After the outbreak of the Kuwaiti war, the international crude oil price jumped directly from the bottom of $13 to a high of $40, an increase of more than 200%.

Then, when the Gulf War broke out, when most crude oil speculators thought that international crude oil prices would continue to rise, the war ended quickly at a devastating rate. International oil prices soon fell back to less than $20, a result that most people did not expect.

For most of the year, international crude oil prices have continued to rise and fall, which has also made countless investors engaged in crude oil futures trading either get rich overnight or go bankrupt.

It can be said that if it weren't for the prophetic advantage of the reborn, Simon would not have dared to put too much of a stake in this turmoil, even if he could roughly predict the next situation.

Otherwise, it may only take one wrong judgment to turn the original huge gains into losses.

Like the quantum fund in the original time and space, Soros was invincible in the Asian market, but because he misjudged the economic situation in Russia, he lost more than $3 billion at once in the second year.

In fact, the reason why Cersei Capital accepted funds from North America this time is also to minimize the occurrence of artificial variables, and at the same time, it can also obtain some useful inside information through this exchange of interests.

Simon stayed in New York until Wednesday.

For two nights in a row, he attended a special fundraising reception hosted by Cersei Capital, where funds had been secured for Cersei Fund Management, mainly for Leon Black's Apollo Management and Lawrence Fink's Black Rock Asset Management.

Apollo Management has set its sights on the assets of the Columbia Savings Credit Bank's securities, which are being auctioned off after the government takeover, with the first tranche planned to raise $1 billion, and the Apollo management team is not going to eat alone, but has decided to work with some of the other financial giants on Wall Street.

Doing so will reduce risk and eliminate Wall Street's hostility towards Cersei Capital, while building Cersei's network on Wall Street.

Most of Wall Street's financial giants are in a state of competition and cooperation.

The main reason why the once invincible Dechong Securities Company went bankrupt and liquidated quickly just a few months after falling into the crisis was that Dechong Securities had no friends on Wall Street at all.

In the past ten years, more than $80 billion in junk bond issuance, Dechong Securities has been eating alone, refusing to give up a little bit of the generous issuance fee to other companies, so that when Dechong Securities fell into a crisis in the second half of last year, it asked other Wall Street peers for help, but none of them were willing to lend a helping hand.

Compared to Apollo Management's first tranche of $1 billion, Cersei Capital intends to raise an additional $3 billion for Blackrock Asset Management on the same scale as Blackrock's existing funding.

The reason for this difference is mainly the difference in the risks of the two companies in doing business.

Apollo Management's leveraged buyouts, equity investments, and vulture investments can lead to heavy losses if you are not careful, compared to the mainstream equity, bond, and fixed income investment business of Blackrock Asset Management is very low-risk, and of course, the returns are also very low, which requires scale to win.

In the midst of the busyness, the time has also come to the last day of January.

Heading back to Los Angeles in the afternoon, Simon spent the morning at Daenerys Entertainment New York in Greenwich.

The spring TV season has quietly begun, and although the annual TV program promotion season is in May, since the beginning of the year, various TV program production companies have begun to look for new TV programs for the new year.

Robert Iger's Daenerys Television produced a total of 10 TV shows last year, including four reality shows that Simon personally identified, three TV series taken over by New World Entertainment, and three new series that started last year.

At present, Daenerys TV's main income is still 4 reality shows such as "Who Will Be a Millionaire", last year's 3 new dramas, the TV network only renewed one, and the other 3 old dramas were cut again after last autumn because of sluggish ratings.

Moreover, among the 4 reality shows, "Beverly's Wife" broadcast on the CBS platform also encountered some problems.

Phenomenal reality shows are never so easy to appear, and in Simon's memory, there are only a few reality shows that can reach the level of familiarity, whether it is in the nineties or after the new century. "Who Will Be a Millionaire" and "Survivor" all belong to this ranks, and "Big Brother" is slightly inferior, but there have been no more popular projects than these reality shows in the past two years.

However, "Beverly's Wife", which belongs to the basic cable station in the original time and space, is not so lucky.

Joining the public TV sequence, compared to "Who Will Be a Millionaire", "Survivor" and "Big Brother", "Beverly's Wife" has ranked last in the ratings data.

At the beginning, CBS also launched two reality shows at the same time, although the ratings were lower, but they could barely be sustained, which made CBS's dependence on "Beverly's Wife" not so strong.

As a result, the second season of Beverly's wife is still unfinished, and CBS is trying to lower the renewal price of the reality show again.

Daenerys of Greenwich is inside the building.

Simon listened to Robert Iger's briefing on the situation in the conference room, knocked on the table and thought about it for a moment, and said, "In that case, let's cancel the cooperation with CBS." ”

Robert Iger was a little surprised: "Simon, even if the offer is reduced by another 20%, we are still profitable, and there is no need to cancel it at all." ”

Simon glanced at the other TV executives in the conference room, waved for the others to go out, and then said to Egger, "Bob, for 'Beverly's Wife,' I actually intended to make a complete wife series. ”

Robert Iger nodded and said, "I know, you said before. However, Simon, this is not realistic, and the big four networks can't give us much time to broadcast an entire series of reality TV. ”

"So, we just needed to find a separate platform for the series. ”

Robert Iger also knew that Cersei Capital had hoarded a large amount of money overseas, and blurted out: "Simon, are you planning to buy a TV network?"

"It's not the time yet," Simon shook his head, "Bob, there are some things we can't tell you yet, but if all goes well, we'll have our own TV network in the second half of the year." Although it is not up to the scale of the four major public television networks, it is enough to accommodate the Wife series, and it just so happens that with the Wife series, we can also build our own TV network into a branded women's television station. ”

Having been in the TV industry for a long time, Iger listened to Simon say this, and soon understood what was going on.

After combing through the information of a series of media groups in the industry in his memory, Iger tentatively asked, "USA?"

The USA network is the nation's basic national cable network, along with C, AMC and MTV many years later.

The current USA television network is still jointly owned by Paramount Communications and MCA, each holding 50% of the shares.

Although the light of the United States has been completely overshadowed by television networks such as C, AMC and MTV after the new century, and has been in a half-dead state for most of the time, in this era, because of the joint support of the two giants Paramount Communications and MCA, the popularity and scale of the American television network in the emerging basic cable network are top-notch.

Seeing that Iger guessed it, Simon didn't deny it, nodded with a smile, and advised: "Remember to keep this matter secret." ”

"Of course. ”

Iger agreed, and did not ask any more questions, but he couldn't help but wonder if Simon's next target was MCA or Paramount Communications.

MCA seems to be a little easier.

Paramount Communications, Martin Davis stayed up until the death of the previous head of this company to take power, and he was easily unwilling to let go.

The two discussed a few more words about "Beverly's Wife", and Simon handed a folder to Iger and said, "I took the time to look at some of the projects that the company is looking for, and selected two of them, you remember to take them down, and you can decide the rest." ”

Iger took the folder handed over by Simon and opened it, and the planning materials for a sitcom appeared in front of him, with the name printed on the cover, "Seinfeld".

"Seinfeld", a sitcom that was on par with "Friends" in the 90s, and this sitcom also set a record of more than 70 million viewers for the final episode.

Simon saw the information of this project when he was in Los Angeles, and another purpose of coming to New York this time was to tell Iger to take this project down, and as for the other part, it was Simon's 'sand' that was mixed in.