Eric and Chris spent several hours agreeing on a detailed plan to absorb Disney stocks from the secondary market. Chris closed the handwritten memo. Seeing Eric intending to leave, he suddenly remembered another thing and called him: "Eric, there is another thing I almost forgot to say."

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 in Cisco, and the two have now left the company."

Chris said, getting up and finding a folder from the filing cabinet and handing it to Eric. Eric opened it and looked at it. It was a resolution document from Cisco's board of directors in mid-August. After reading it, Eric raised his head and asked, "What's going on?"

"The Grays think that the current Cisco management is too pursuing interests and is not in line with their original intention of founding Cisco. They have had a few troubles for this. I happened to meet once when I attended the Cisco mid-year meeting in June. The couple pointed at the nose of the company CYO Morgan Rich and cursed, and the meeting was postponed for three hours. In August, the unbearable company management threatened the board of directors for collective resignation, and finally passed the proposal to hijack the Grays in all positions in Cisco."

After briefly telling the whole thing, Chris said with a faint contempt on his face: "Actually, the reason why they do this has nothing to do with the company's business strategy. The couple just has been resentful of losing control of Cisco."

"I understand this. Unless it threatens our interests, we should try not to interfere in Cisco's management."

Chris nodded and said, "I understand. But what I want to say is what's next. After the Grays left Cisco, he revealed that he was going to sell the stocks in his hands. I think you may be interested. We also have enough funds now."

Eric recalled Cisco's equity division and showed an excited look. After Cisco went public, the Creator Gray and his wife held 27.6% of Cisco's shares, and they are still the largest shareholder of Cisco. Sequoia Capital, which initially invested in Cisco, owned 23.5% of the shares, ranking second. The third place was Firefly Investment Company, which holds 23% of the shares, and the remaining nearly 30% of the shares are scattered in the hands of institutional investors and company management.

Although it is a listed company, because the market is not optimistic about Cisco's development prospects when it was listed, most of the shares offered by Cisco were only subscribed by investment institutions. The shares that flow into the secondary market are very rare, and it is not feasible to absorb and increase their holdings through the circulating market. The investors who have already obtained the shares are unwilling to take it off easily because of Cisco's good performance after its listing. Therefore, the sale of the shares by the Grays is definitely the only opportunity to increase their holdings on Cisco's stocks on a large scale.

If we can take all the shares in the Grays, Firefly Investment will almost be equivalent to absolute holdings in Cisco. This is what Eric dreams of.

"How much do they offer?" Eric asked the most critical question directly, with a desire to win in his tone.

Chris could also understand what Eric was thinking. As the manager of Firefly Investment, he knew Cisco's situation better than Eric, shook his head and smiled: "Eric, you may be disappointed. The Grays did not want to sell all the shares in his hands. They were only willing to sell two-thirds of the shares, about 18%. The offer was 250 million US dollars, which was 30% higher than the market price. So now most interested investors are negotiating with the Grays. I estimate that the final transaction price will not exceed 200 million."

"Contact with the Grays as soon as possible. Be sure to take this share. Anyway, we have enough funds now, so it doesn't matter if it's expensive," Eric thought for a while and said, "In this way, tell the Grays that if they are willing to sell all the shares they have, we will buy it at a 30% premium."

"I will convey it, but it's unlikely. If the couple didn't need funds to start a business again, I guess these 18% of the shares wouldn't be sold."

"Try it, there will be no loss," Eric nodded.

#

In the past few days when Eric came to New York again, international crude oil prices reached an unprecedented high of US$41 per barrel. It was almost the same few days. Western countries and several major oil exporting countries in the Middle East began to introduce various measures to effectively stabilize crude oil prices. First, Saudi Arabia announced that it would increase domestic crude oil production capacity to 100% to supply market demand. North America and European countries also began to use their own crude oil reserves to stabilize the market. In addition, the United States, led by the US military, was deployed in the Persian Gulf, with all troops exceeding 600,000. In terms of weapons and equipment, it even formed a comprehensive suppression on Iraq. Under the influence of various negative news, crude oil prices began to fall slowly.

Even Eric himself did not expect that his chances of another trip to New York were such a coincidence that it happened to catch up with the decline after crude oil prices reached its peak. Therefore, after returning to Los Angeles again, various temptations flocked in again, without exception, spying on the benefits of his oil crisis.

During Eric's operation of crude oil futures, the principal amount was temporarily borrowed from seven major film companies, and seven majors finally got nothing but a loan and an optional interest. Therefore, some people have a strong idea of ​​knowing how much money their "own" funds have made. It seems that as long as they know the result, these people's loss will be comforted.

Of course, Eric could not reveal the specific information to stimulate those people. He could not do such inhumane things. When encountering such temptation, Eric would often circumvent the topic in a few words. So some people had to turn their attention to the movements of Eric's companies, hoping to get some information from it.

But time has passed day by day. In addition to the plans revealed by some Firefly employees about the shooting base of Preya Vista, only Firefly Investment announced that it would acquire 18% of the shares of Cisco founder Gray and his wife for US$210 million. Apart from that, Eric does not seem to have made much move. Although Eric claimed to invest $1 billion when negotiating with Preya Vista community officials, anyone with a discerning eye can see that Preya Vista’s shooting base will not cost so much money, not to mention that the project’s cycle lasts several years, with the first batch of investments up to 100 million.

This calm little fight made many people feel more at ease, and they guessed like self-comfortably that Eric might not have made much money.

As October slowly passes, Hollywood is about to usher in the new year's end. Big film companies have begun to promote the main films at the end of the year. Executives of the seven major film companies are relieved and surprised to find that Eric has not personally directed the film except for a producer of "The Storm Point".

Fireflies have only two movies released by the end of the year. In addition to "The Stunning Point", there is another movie produced by Robert Shay. This work has a bit of a thrilling comedy style that imitates "Ghostbusters". It is a movie that Eric has never heard of. It is probably an anomaly caused by the butterfly effect. The investment in the movie has also reached 40 million. According to Robert Shay's previous agreement with Eric, Fireflies accounted for a quarter of the investment.

The "Home Imperial" series, which Firefly has been featured for two consecutive years, has not produced a sequel this year.

The main reason is that Stewart's caa agency has proposed a sky-high salary of $15 million, almost twice that of last year. Moreover, the Langkols and his wife seemed to have "get it open" this time and did not interfere wantonly, leaving full rights to the caa for the pay negotiations.

If the pay offered by Caa and the price increase of other starring actors in the movie, the cost of forcibly producing a sequel will reach 25 million, and the total cost of the sequel will exceed 50 million. With the later marketing budget, the movie will require 140 million box office to recover the cost. According to the downward trend of the box office of the first two movies, the possibility of this sequel being produced is very high. Eric did not think too much and temporarily cut off the production plan of the sequel.

On the day the news that Firefly would suspend the "Home Imperial" series was released, 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 refused the other party. Firefly was not heavily dependent on a certain movie series like some film companies, so it did not need to be too accommodating to the main creators of the movie. Since some people spoke ignorantly, they would have the awareness of shattering their teeth and swallowing them themselves.

"The Scarlet Point" was closed in mid-October and is expected to take a month to complete the post-production, but these days, Eric did not approach Catherine Bigelow because the extramarital affair between Cameron and Linda Hamilton were caught by paparazzi and were included in the newspaper with photos.

On the day the news was revealed, Catherine rushed to the shooting scene of "Terminator 2" in New Mexico. After Cameron personally admitted his cheating, the woman divorced Cameron without any delay. But Cameron was not those unmarried directors after all. As a married man, he had an extramarital affair with the heroine. It was rumored that he would likely affect the box office of "Terminator 2". Therefore, the two agreed to announce the news of their divorce after "Terminator 2" was released.

Although this matter was temporarily hidden from the media, there were many people who knew about it. As an investor in the two movies, Eric certainly could not have known it. As a very independent woman, Catherine Bigelow did not marry the other party until she was 35 because of her talent for admiring Cameron. Unexpectedly, this marriage lasted less than three years and her husband cheated on her, and it would probably be difficult to accept any woman.
Chapter completed!