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

The days are short in winter.

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

Janet is not the only one in the apartment, Sofia Fesi also came over from Europe yesterday.

Simon is still working, but Janet and many people around him are busy preparing for the 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 this time for the wedding dress. The Gucci design team started busy designing the wedding dress plan after Simon and Janet's wedding date was confirmed. The housekeeper came here specially to discuss some production details with Janet in person.

Last night, Janet dragged her to discuss wedding dress styles until early in the morning. Simon still woke up very early the next day.

I fumbled for my watch and looked at it. It was still 6:50 in the morning on the east coast.

The woman in his arms noticed Simon's movements and clung to him tighter. In her sleep, she opened her small mouth and bit the man's shoulder, and then there was no movement again.

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

Winter is indeed a season suitable for laziness.

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

After Simon got dressed and washed, he opened the bedroom curtains, and the desolate Central Park was filled with the soft sunshine unique to this season. It was pale and feeble, and seemed to be reluctant to do so.

At least it's a sunny day.

When they came downstairs, Janet and Sophia had just prepared breakfast. When they saw Simon, Janet came over and kissed the man, and said, "I was about to tell you to wake up."

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

Sofia brought breakfast and put a few copies of today's newspapers in Simon's hands before sitting down. During the meal, she talked about some things about Gucci. The fashion week in February was coming soon. The housekeeper was waiting for a while.

I have no time to spare, I will return to Europe tomorrow.

After breakfast, Sofia rushed to the headquarters of Gucci's US branch. Neither Simon nor Janet had any work plans today, and they were just as bored as cats in the winter, enjoying their world together in the apartment.

"...I have already made preparations. On that day, there will be a maze of flower walls outside our wedding venue in Yarra Valley Park. All kinds of flowers will definitely be very beautiful..."

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

Looking at the woman's blushing face when she talked about this, Simon smiled and said: "Don't all women have premarital phobia? You don't seem to have any reaction at all."

Janet leaned against Simon affectionately and said: "Only women who doubt whether they have met the right man will have premarital phobia. I don't have it."

When Simon heard this, he smiled and kissed Janet's smooth cheek. He still felt a little unfinished, and stretched out his arms to hug the woman.

Janet quickly began to respond.

The two were entangled for a moment, and soon turned into a scene not suitable for children.

After spending a whole day in the apartment, Sofia didn't come back to disturb them at night. The next day was Monday, and they had to continue working.

On Saturday morning, Sheila Ward told Simon that Saddam’s speech at the meeting of the Arab Cooperation Council was unclear. Therefore, the Cersei Capital team in New York based this news and many recent reports from mainstream European and American countries.

Trends, began to make arrangements in the oil futures market in advance.

As hedge funds have begun to flourish in the past two years, Cersei Capital is not the only one eyeing 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 coming period, but Cersei Capital is betting that oil prices will fall.

In Simon's memory, because Saddam Hussein has shown a "non-cooperation" stance with the West since last year, and because the Bush family, a family with close ties to various oil giants, is in power in the United States, European and American oil groups finally decided to take action against Iraq.

Take action.

The first step is not war, but targeting Iraq's domestic economy, which has become increasingly vulnerable after the Iran-Iraq war.

Iraq's economy is deeply dependent on oil. The best way to crack down on 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 significantly increase production in the next few months to lower international oil prices. This is also the most direct reason for Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

In the original time and space, before the Kuwait War, international crude oil prices plummeted from US$19 in early 1990 to US$13 in just a few months, a drop of more than 30%.

After the outbreak of the Kuwait War, international crude oil prices jumped directly from the bottom of 13 US dollars to a high of 40 US dollars, an increase of more than 200%.

Then, the Gulf War broke out. When most crude oil speculators thought that the international crude oil price would continue to rise, the war ended quickly at a devastating speed. The international oil price soon fell back to less than 20 US dollars. As a result, most people

None of them were expected.

For more than half a year, international crude oil prices have been rising and falling continuously, causing countless investors engaged in crude oil futures trading to either become rich overnight or go bankrupt.

It can be said that if Simon did not have the prophetic advantage of being a reborn person, even if Simon could roughly predict the next situation, he would not dare to place too heavy a bet in this turmoil.

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

Just like the Quantum Fund in the original time and space, Soros was invincible in the Asian market, but because he misjudged Russia's economic situation, he suffered a one-time loss of more than 3 billion US dollars in the second year.

In fact, the reason why Cersei Capital accepted funds from North America to join this time is 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 is in New York until Wednesday.

For two consecutive nights, he attended a fundraising reception specially organized by Cersei Capital. The funds from Cersei Fund Management Company were already in place. These two receptions were mainly for Apollo Management Company headed by Leon Black and Lawrence Fink.

of Blackrock Asset Management.

Apollo Management Company has set its sights on the securities assets of the Colombian Savings and Credit Bank, which is undergoing auction and liquidation after being taken over by the government. The first tranche plans to raise US$1 billion. At the same time, the team of Apollo Management Company does not intend to go it alone, but decided to cooperate with

Cooperate with some other financial giants on Wall Street.

Doing so can reduce risks on the one hand, eliminate Wall Street's hostility to Cersei Capital on the other, and build Cersei Capital's relationship network on Wall Street.

Most financial giants on Wall Street are in a state of competition and cooperation with each other.

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

In the past ten years, more than US$80 billion of junk bonds were issued. Drexel Securities has always been on its own, unwilling to give up any of its generous issuance fees to other companies. So much so that when Drexel Securities fell into crisis in the second half of last year, it asked other Wall Street peers.

He asked for help, but no one was willing to lend a helping hand.

Compared to Apollo Management's first $1 billion fundraising plan, Cersei Capital plans to raise another $3 billion for Blackrock Asset Management, which is similar to Blackrock's existing funding.

The reason for this difference is mainly due to the risk difference in the business conducted by the two companies.

Apollo Management is responsible for leveraged buyouts, equity investments and vulture investments. If you are not careful, you may suffer heavy losses. In comparison, the mainstream stock, bond and fixed income product investment business engaged in by Black Rock Asset Management is extremely risky.

Of course, the income is also very low, so we need to rely on scale to win.

In the midst of my busy schedule, the time has come to the last day of January.

Returning to Los Angeles in the afternoon, Simon spent the entire morning at the New York branch of Daenerys Entertainment in Greenwich.

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

Daenerys Television, headed by Robert Egger, produced a total of 10 TV shows last year, 4 of which were reality shows personally selected by Simon, 3 TV series taken over by New World Entertainment, and 3 new series launched last year.

At present, the main income of Daenerys TV Company is still four reality shows such as "Who Will Be a Millionaire". Of the three new dramas last year, the TV network only renewed one, and the other three old dramas were

After last year's autumn release, it was canceled again due to low ratings.

Moreover, among the four reality shows, "The Housewives of Beverly Hills" broadcast on the CBS platform also encountered some problems.

Phenomenal reality shows have never been so easy to appear. In Simon's memory, there are only a few reality shows that can reach the level of familiarity, whether in the 1990s or after the new century. "Who Will Be a Millionaire"

, "Survivor" all belong to this category, "Big Brother" is slightly less popular, but in the past two years, there has been no more popular project than these reality shows.

However, "The Housewives of Beverly Hills", which was a basic cable channel in its original time and space, did not have such good luck.

Adding to the public channel sequence, compared to "Who Will Be a Millionaire", "Survivor" and "Big Brother", the ratings data of "The Beverly Housewife" is already at the bottom.

At the beginning, CBS also launched two reality shows at the same time. Although the ratings were lower, they were barely sustainable. This made CBS less dependent on "The House of Beverly Hills".

Therefore, the second half of the second season of "The Housewives of Beverly Hills" has not yet been completed, and CBS is trying to lower the renewal price of this reality show again.

Daenerys inside the Farewell Building in Greenwich.

Simon listened to Robert Iger's introduction to the situation in the conference room, knocked on the table and thought for a moment, then said: "In this case, let's cancel the cooperation with CBS."

Robert Egger was a little surprised: "Simon, even if the quotation is reduced by another 20%, we will still be profitable, and there is no need to cancel."

Simon glanced at the other TV department executives in the conference room, waved others out, and then said to Iger: "Bob, for "The House of Beverly Hills," I originally planned to make it into a complete "House of Beverly Hills"

a series of."

Robert Egger nodded and said: "I know, you have mentioned it before. However, Simon, this is not realistic. It is impossible for the four major TV networks to give us too much time to broadcast an entire series of reality shows."

"So, we needed to find a separate platform for this series."

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

"Now is not the time," Simon shook his head and said, "Bob, there are some things I can't tell you yet, but if everything goes well, we will have our own TV network in the second half of the year. Although it is not as good as the four major public televisions

Although the size of the network is large enough to accommodate the My Wife series, we can also use the My Wife series to build our own TV network into a branded women’s TV station.”

Having been in the television industry for a long time, Iger heard what Simon said and quickly understood what was going on.

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

The USA Television Network, like the CW, AMC and MTV television networks many years later, is a national basic cable television network in the United States.

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

Although after the new century, the light of USA was completely overshadowed by television networks such as CW, AMC and MTV, and it was in a state of half-death most of the time, but in this era, due to the joint support of the two giants Paramount Communications and MCA, USA TV
To be continued...