After returning from Tasmania, Jennifer stayed in Melbourne for another three days before returning to Los Angeles.

The entire Westeros system only calculates the number of companies that Westeros directly hold shares, including the four core "women", as well as a large number of listed or non-listed companies such as Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, American Online, and Nokia, which has reached 36, and it is still increasing, and the number of other second- and third-tier subsidiaries is even larger.

Although Simon delegates power as much as possible, because of the large number of these companies, the business of these companies still has very heavy and complicated daily affairs that he needs to handle personally.

The female assistant's status in Simon's business empire is equivalent to his eyes. She is in charge of an assistant office with six other assistants, constantly screening and summarizing the information of all companies in the entire Westeros system and then transferring it to Simon for processing.

Simon continued to stay in Melbourne, followed up on the shooting of "Batman: The Dark Knight" and remotely controlled the operation of the entire Westeros system.

Enterprises always appear more vigorous in the early stages of development, and the Westeros system, which has been expanding rapidly in recent years, is even more so.

Florence.

The continued turmoil in Europe has not affected Italy, but it has been difficult for the country located on the peninsula to have too much voice in Europe, both economically and politically.

Sofia Fessi also rarely cares about politics and has been negotiating with the Gucci family recently.

The last male member of Gucci's second generation, 85-year-old Aldo Gucci, passed away last month, and that was nothing.

Melisandra has achieved absolute control over Gucci, and it is difficult for the Gucci family to have too much impact on this luxury brand anyway.

However, the internal disputes of the Gucci family are well known to many people. Aldo Gucci did not arrange his own funeral. He held the 12% of Gucci shares in his name until the last second of his death, and then threw them to several children.

Without prior arrangement of family trust, Aldo Gucci's children will face unavoidable inheritance tax problems.

The more serious problem is that Aldo Gucci's children cannot afford enough cash to pay inheritance tax. Although Gucci's recovery is very rapid, Sofia has used all the excess funds of the company to expand its business and has not planned to give shareholders a penny in recent years.

Therefore, the Gucci family had to choose to sell the 12% stake.

Melisandra, who has the support of the Westeros system behind the scenes, is naturally the most suitable target to take over. Sofia is also interested in taking over this equity. With this 12% stake, Melisandra's shareholding in Gucci can reach 75%.

However, compared with the total expenditure of US$170 million for Simon's initial acquisition of 63% of Gucci's shares, this time the Gucci family's 12% of its shares quoted a high price of US$150 million. Although the outside world's assessment of Gucci's market value has been rising steadily, Sofia cannot accept such a offer. After discussing with Simon, Melisandra's quotation ceiling was US$100 million, so Sofia has been bargaining with the Gucci family.

Because it only has 12% of the shares, it cannot be controlled by Gucci at all. The price is still so high that besides Melisandra, the Gucci family cannot find a second takeover in a short period of time.

Helsinki.

After Nokia's mobile communications department was under Westeros, it was no longer dragged down by other assets and received another $50 million in funds. Yoma Olila quickly started the research and development of mobile phone and base station equipment related to GSM technology.

The direct border with the Soviet Union and the turmoil in Europe this year made the whole of Finland feel a little nervous, but life still has to be lived.

In the first half of the year, Finland had begun to build the first GSM pilot network in Europe or the world. Although it was led by Germany's Siemens Group, Nokia also participated in it without hesitation.

However, it will take at least one year for GSM to be officially commercialized.

Nokia's mobile communications department cannot completely abandon its accumulated foundation for many years. It continued to launch two analog signal phones in the first half of the year, and the sales volume is pretty good.

New York.

While Simon and his female assistant spent their time in a cabin in Tasmania, James Rebel officially signed a shareholding agreement with Qualcomm, a wireless communications technology company headquartered in San Diego.

In the past two years, Qualcomm has initially completed the patent layout of CMDA technology and has been recognized by AT-T, Bell Pacific, Motorola and other companies. It has also established cooperative relationships with South Korean telecommunications companies and continues to obtain funds from all parties to invest in the research and development of CDMA commercial technology.

However, after several consecutive capital injections such as AT-T have been rapidly exhausted, Qualcomm has recently faced a shortage of funds.

If you do not accept Westeros, Qualcomm's funds of less than $200,000 on its books may not even be paid smoothly for employees' wages in August.

The strength of Westeros before seizing control of the two companies, AOL and Cisco, made Qualcomm's management quite concerned, but it would be difficult for Qualcomm to find a big funder who can immediately withdraw large amounts of funds in a short period of time.

After some bargaining, Westeros acquired 4 million common shares of Qualcomm for US$35 million, accounting for 20% of Qualcomm's total share capital at this time.

However, Westeros has not received any clauses that can maintain its shareholding ratio during subsequent financing or IPO, just like other shareholders. After Qualcomm accepts Westeros's shareholding, it can continue to promote the IPO without restrictions.

San Francisco.

With the further promotion of the Igrit portal and World Wide Web technology, although July has not yet passed, the number of users of the United States Online has increased by more than the entire June. It is expected that the number of users accessing the World Wide Web this month will increase by 55,000 to 60,000.

In order to keep up with the pace of market expansion, both Igrit and American Online can only be described as "funding is burning."

Igrit is completely in a state of burning money. From browser software, server software, portal technologies to the underlying JavaScript language development, the R&D investment is huge, but it is nowhere to be achieved to achieve sustainable revenue.

Simon originally wanted to use the software sales subsidy portal department, but this goal is obviously not realistic in the short term.

Carol Butz, who is in charge of the software department, has a strong personality. Although she has begun to earn revenue from the installation of browser software, she not only does not mean to subsidize the portal department, but instead cuts away $10 million from the $20 million injected by Simon for the development of the software department itself.

For Jeff Bezos, the remaining $10 million, the maintenance of the portal team and the latest construction of two brand new data centers will probably only last until the end of August.

Fortunately, Jeff Bezos has begun to explore the advertising business and has successfully obtained two advertising orders from IBM and Microsoft, with a small amount of only $800,000. He also rejected Gates' suggestion to increase advertising investment in exchange for priority development of Windows platform browser software.

This unconspicuous vision of gains and losses made Simon very satisfied.

In order to enable users to obtain the latest features as soon as possible, IGRENT's IE browser is updated several times a month.

For customers, if the browser software on one platform is often updated in time than another platform, it will naturally become biased without realizing it.

However, although the Windows operating system has begun to rise, Apple and traditional Unix computers are still mainstream in recent years. Although Westeros is a major shareholder of Microsoft, in order to promote the World Wide Web technology as soon as possible and avoid giving other competitors an opportunity to take advantage of it, IE browser is not yet likely to be biased towards Microsoft.

As for the competition and differences between Jeff Bezos and Carol Butz, Simon did not intervene too much.

Proper internal competition is also beneficial to corporate development.

Moreover, it is not the time for the software department to subsidize the portal. If that day really comes, Simon would not indulge Carol Butz's willfulness.

In addition, at the end of July, 100 Internet cafes opened by the United States Online officially opened.

Excellent early publicity and marketing, the leisurely environment inside the Internet cafe is no less than that of the cafe, and the public's curiosity about the Internet, attracted a large number of customers for a while.

However, as initially estimated, these 100 Internet cafes are basically not profitable.

The charge is $3 per hour, with 20 computers per Internet cafe, and the business hours are from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. Calculated that even if an Internet cafe is fully operational at full capacity, the theoretical income per month is only $28,800, which is actually half of it.

Just so happens, the rough breakeven point of each Internet cafe is $15,000.

If you want to make a profit, you can only rely on drinks, snacks or sell some of the surrounding areas as you originally expected.

Although these 100 Internet cafes have little hope of making profits, AOL has no intention of giving up this business.

After all, Simon's fundamental purpose is to promote World Wide Web technology.

In the plan, after a period of exploration and operation, AOL intends to adopt authorized franchise to expand the Internet cafe industry. Franchisees only need to pay a certain franchise fee to AOL to obtain a full set of technical and solution support. They can also adopt a relatively flexible business method, appropriately increase the number of computers, increase the price of Internet access or develop additional businesses, and it is relatively easy to make a profit.

Los Angeles.

Simon is not here, Daenerys Entertainment is still as vibrant as a little beast in spring.

The financial data for the first half of 1990 have been completed. Although the management has not released the detailed data, both internal and external media have found a rough idea.

In the first six months of this year, just an unexpected box office hit "The Pretty Beauty" made Daenerys Entertainment a big profit.

However, the film "Fengyue Pretty" that is enough to support a film company's annual performance has brought Daenerys Entertainment's revenue to more than $160 million in the first half of the year, but it is less than one-tenth of Daenerys Entertainment's pre-tax profit in the first two quarters.

However, "Batman: The Moment of War", which was hit at the end of last year, made Daenerys Entertainment a lot of money in both box office and peripheral aspects in the first half of the year.

In addition, since the end of 1988, Daenerys Entertainment has accumulated a large number of top-notch films such as "Scream" series, "Death Poetry Club", "Rain Man", "The Sixth Sense of Supernatural Sense", "Body Guard", "Flying Over Innocence", etc., and in the first half of 1990, Daenerys Entertainment continued to bring large amounts of money to Daenerys Entertainment in overseas theaters, videotape markets and TV broadcasting platforms.

A series of popular reality shows and other TV series projects produced by Daenerys TV Company are also bringing stable income to the company.

Not only that, the Daenerys Entertainment Consumer Products Department, which is run by Nancy Brill, has made great contributions to a series of projects produced by the company.

Among them, although the fighting version of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" electronic game released by Blizzard Studio in March did not reach the best-selling level of last year's role-playing version of the game, the cumulative sales of the game cartridges also exceeded 1 million boxes in three months, and the total sales are expected to exceed 2 million boxes.

Because he has obtained the special offer from Nintendo, he can release five games at the special offer standard every year. In addition to the fighting version of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", Blizzard Studio will also launch a sequel to the role-playing version of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" in the second half of the year. EA company, which Daenerys Entertainment invests in, will also provide three other games to enter the Nintendo console platform.

All of this combined, only in the first half of 1990, Daenerys Entertainment's after-tax net profit scale reached US$573 million. With the success of films such as "The Love of the Man and the Men's Ninja Turtles" during the summer season, the annual net profit figure can at least double.

After the financial report was released, Amy Pascal was even a little dazed during this period.

She officially signed and joined the company in March 1987, and the contract ended in March 1991, for a total of four years.

Based on the company's performance in the first half of the year and her original salary terms, the compensation, cash and stock rewards she can receive this year are likely to exceed $100 million.

$100 million.

If someone told her a few years ago that she could become a billionaire, Amy would have thought the other person was talking nonsense.

Hollywood executives, except for the top Steve Rose and Lou Vasalman, who have been in high positions for a long time and have made the company large enough. The others, the salaries are actually not high, and everyone is busy and just making hard money.

Even Steve Ross received a total salary of only more than $36 million last year, but this has been criticized by the media and shareholders as a sieve.

In fact, everyone knows that the most profitable thing in this industry is the small group of top superstars.

As for the senior executives in the circle, although their power seems to be very large, they are also subject to many constraints. Most of the time, they have to be arrogant by investors and try every means to accommodate celebrities. They are not as glorious as the outside world imagines.

However, she, Amy Pascal, a woman, can earn $100 million a year in an industry where women are generally discriminated and materialized.

In a trance, Amy even occasionally thought in a vague way, how should she spend such a large amount of money?

As the Westeros system expanded vigorously, time silently passed through the last few days of July 1990.

In the last week of July, the Middle East, where the situation was already tense, became increasingly stormy in the Middle East.

After using the excuse of Kuwait's "stolen procurement" of Iraqi oil, demanding that Kuwait exempt its debts and provide huge compensations ineffective, Iraq's most elite tank armored division had already been stationed on the Iko border.

He did not want the Arab brothers to fight each other, Egyptian President Mubarak took the initiative to visit Iraq and talked about Kuwait, and left embarrassedly after touching him.

Middle Eastern countries, which are also threatened, held a large-scale joint military exercise with the US Persian Gulf fleet on July 24 in an attempt to deter the Saddam authorities. Meanwhile, international crude oil prices also soared rapidly in the last week of July.

In just one week, it has soared from the original low of $13 to nearly the high of $20.

Cersei Capital cleared all short contracts on Monday, July 23, but in this way, it was swallowed up a considerable amount of profit by the rising crude oil prices.

When crude oil prices soared in the last week of July, long positions, which had originally suffered huge losses, turned losses into profits in just a few days, and followed by shocking profits.
Chapter completed!