Chapter 189 187. What? Bomi wants to acquire Blizzard?!

Tuesday, February 11, 2003.

As soon as Cao Yang arrived at the company, he received good news from his little secretary.

"Boss, we have already responded to the bid for Vivendi. Vivendi President Jean-Rene Fultu said that we hope we can go to Paris to negotiate specific matters."

"Huh? Really?" Cao Yang was a little overjoyed.

Just in January this year, Jean-Rene Fultu, president of Vivendi, announced to the outside world that he would sell his game division.

There may not be many people who have heard of Vivendi, but its subsidiaries are all very famous.

This giant with a history of more than 100 years is very legendary.

Vivendi Global Group is the world's largest environmental service group, listed on the Paris stock market, and is in charge of the world's four aspects: water affairs, garbage disposal, transportation and energy.

Simply put, Vivendi and entertainment giants such as Disney and Time Warner are among the eight giant media multinational groups in the world, with business scopes including music, television, movies, publishing, telecommunications, the Internet and games. In addition to games, its Universal Music is the world's largest record company, with more than 25% of the global music market share. In terms of film, Universal Pictures, which once controlled one of the eight major Hollywood film companies.

Before Cao Yang sought music authorization, Yang Junrong had collaborated with his subsidiary Universal Music.

Therefore, as the big boss of Alpha Music Company, Cao Yang is not particularly unfamiliar with Vivendi, the big boss of Universal Music.

At least two children have worked together.

The company started out as a water business, but later transformed into a giant media capital group, often doing mergers, reorganizations and then selling.

Some game companies were accidentally attracted by Vivendi and were tragically destroyed.

If you want to talk about the most typical case, you have to talk about a company called Xueleshan.

This company has sold the game "Half-Life".

If there were no Xueleshan, there would be no later V Club. Back then, they would not be inferior to Blizzard, and even beat EA.

At that time, Vivendi quickly set his sights on the company and proposed an acquisition. Xue Leshan thought he had embraced a thigh, but unexpectedly, this leg was not that easy to embraced.

Less than a year after being acquired by Vivendi, Vivendi carried out drastic reforms to Xueleshan, dismembered a large factory, laid off a considerable number of Xueleshan's employees, and all the studios were closed.

It is not an exaggeration to describe it as [eat clean].

The next one to be killed is Blizzard.

Blizzard is a company with a tragic fate. It has changed several owners, but it doesn’t know what its surname is.

In 1994, Blizzard (then called Chaos Studio) was acquired by Davidson and its affiliates and renamed Blizzard Entertainment.

In 1995, Davidson (Blizzard's first parent company) and its affiliated companies were acquired by Xueleshan and were immediately sold to CUC International.

In 1997, CUC International (the second parent company) merged with HFS Group into Shengteng Company.

In 1998, Shengteng Company was sold to an entertainment department under the French Harves.

Later, France's Harves (the fourth parent company) was acquired by Vivendi.

Then, naturally, Blizzard became a member of Vivendi's game business unit.

After that, Blizzard began to be eaten up for a long time, and after all IPs were squeezed out, they were forced to embark on the road of self-redemption.

In 2016, Vivendi also ate Ubisoft's mobile game company Gameloft.

This company has developed many mobile games such as "Wild Speed", "Dungeon Hunter", "Cell Spinal 5: Sin", "Spider-Man", etc.

After being eaten by Vivendi, the mobile game company was completely destroyed, all internal management personnel were removed, and the board of directors even resigned collectively. In this way, the Ubisoft mobile game company completely turned into chaos.

Netizens' comments on Vivendi's company in their previous life are:

【A company that is far more than penguin garbage.

Penguin caters to players. If players like the buyout system, Penguin caters to the buyout system. Vivandi is different. He just sees you making money, maliciously acquires it, and forcefully plucks the hair. Then he loses it. Activision Blizzard was killed in the past, but fortunately he got out of the buyout system.]

...

Jean is the company's president who just took office last year.

At the beginning of this year, Jean-René Fultu officially announced that it would sell the Vivendi Games Division.

So far, Vivendi Games has about 1,500 employees in 15 offices around the world.

The company's five major game development studios are:

Black Label Games, Blizzard Entertainment, Knowledge Adventure, NDA Productions and Sierra Entertainment.

...

The reason why Vivendi chose to sell the game division is actually very simple -

Because these game companies lose money.

In 2002, after the crazy expansion, Vivendi Global fell into a serious financial and credit crisis.

In order to get rid of the high debt of $31 billion as soon as possible, the newly appointed president Jean-Rene Fultu sold Canal+, which has been in a loss-making state, and then sent a signal that it might sell the entire game department, including Blizzard.

In Vivendi Universal’s huge organizational structure, the game division to which Blizzard belongs, namely Vivendi Universal Games, is just an optional piece.

According to last year's financial report, Vivendi Global's total turnover in the second half of 2002 was US$11.01 billion, with a loss of US$723 million.

There are several main reasons for the loss of 10 billion in revenue:

1. The cost is too high;

2. The cost is too high;

3. The taxes are too high.

Among them, the game business unit's turnover was only US$275 million, and the loss reached US$59.5 million.

Judging from the numbers alone, the revenue in the game accounts for less than 2% of the company's total revenue, while the loss accounts for 4%. This performance is very disappointing for investors.

Therefore, it has become inevitable to sell the game business unit.

...

When Cao Yang heard that Vivendi was going to sell the game business unit, he was very happy.

This shows that Bomi's opportunity has come.

From last year's 911 stock trading to making money, until now, the funds that Bomi Company can take out can be about 400 million US dollars.

After 9/11, Cao Yang originally made about 1.5 billion US dollars from the stock market, but in the end he only cashed out 300 million yuan, and all the rest was invested in the stock market. Now the US stock market has recovered. The 1.2 billion invested in the stock market has already made a very generous return. The part of investing in Apple alone has risen nearly 3 times.

So Bomi still looks nearly 3 billion US dollars in the US stock market.

Because Bomi is not listed, the outside world has always underestimated its asset appraisal.

In fact, Bomi is rich now, very rich. At least in China, Bomi is definitely second to none.

But compared to foreign giants, it doesn't seem to be anything.

This time, I wanted to take the opportunity to acquire the game department under Vivendi, mainly with a speculative attitude. Because I experienced it in my previous life, Cao Yang had a very deep impression of this node.

If you don't buy it now, then Vivendi's gaming division will rise to a sky-high price in the future.

Activision Blizzard redeemed itself from its parent company Vivendi, which cost almost US$8.2 billion.

...

Cao Yang acquired Vivendi's game business unit mainly for Blizzard.

Blizzard is divided into two parts: Blizzard in the North and Blizzard in the South.

The former former Vulture Company of Northern Blizzard was later acquired by Blizzard, and then was acquired by Vivendi together.

Then, the north and south are divided into differentiated.

The representative work of Blizzard in the North is the "Diablo" series, and the representative work of Blizzard in the South is the "Warcraft" series.

So far, Blizzard's most famous "Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne" has not been released yet.

What's more, the future World of Warcraft will be a terrible money-making weapon.

The global revenue brought in 2006 was more than 10 billion US dollars every year.

So Cao Yang hopes to take down Blizzard.

Since Vivandi is going to sell, Cao Yang will bid with him. If the winner is better, if he fails, he will look for something else.

I didn't expect to receive a response from my Paris headquarters today.

...

The acquisition of Blizzard was something Cao Yang didn't dare to think about in his previous life. He didn't expect that he would be lucky enough to become the next candidate for [Blizzard's Parent Company] today.

Cao Yang couldn't help but shook his head and sighed.

Life is really unpredictable.

The rebirth is really too outrageous. Without grasping the opportunities for the future, he would never have accumulated such a huge amount of wealth in just two years, nor would he have the opportunity to negotiate this business.

In short, this is an opportunity and a good thing for Cao Yang.

It just so happens that Bomi lacks a grasp in the United States. If Vivendi's game business unit can be successfully taken down, then its subsidiary will be used as a base in the future and can fully radiate to the entire Western Europe.

"Shan Hai Jing" has no worries about the release channels.

...

The next morning, Cao Yang took his young secretary, Professor Fang and a few young legal officials, plus the newly invited French translator girl, to Paris.
To be continued...