The issue of charity is actually a bit sensitive to Simon. Amy Pascal just made a few jokes and stopped continuing, but said: "I just got the news in the morning that Vivendy has confirmed to promote Sandy Litwatt and Bill Michanik as Disney CEO and president respectively. It will be announced publicly next week that Frank Wells will retire."

Simon had also received the news and nodded, "I know."

After completing the acquisition of Disney at the end of last year, France's Vivendi Group has been looking for a suitable professional manager for the company. However, some of the candidates Vivendi's favorites have expressed their rejection, including C's president Michael Orwitz, former Spielberg's right-hand assistant Frank Marshall and Catherine Kennedy, Hollywood gold medal producer Joe Silvo and several executives under Daenerys Entertainment Group.

The circle probably realized something, and coupled with Vivendi's conservativeness in delegating power, these external candidates have expressed their rejection one after another.

In desperation, Vivendi had to promote executives from within Disney.

Sandy Litwatt is Disney's vice president and head of legal affairs, and Bill Michanik is Disney's president of home entertainment for videotape and television distribution businesses.

The two were promoted to Disney CEO and president respectively, which was equivalent to two consecutive upgrades.

However, from the perspective of actual power, the two of them are actually only equivalent to being promoted one level.

According to Simon's news, after Sandy Litwat was promoted to CEO, he was actually in charge of former president Frank Wells' business, mainly corporate personnel and legal administrative affairs. As the president, Bill Michanik will directly manage the production business that was once in charge of Jeffrey Carsonberg.

The core corporate strategic planning and financial power, these powers that should belong to the CEO, are directly controlled by Vivendi's headquarters.

This is actually not the result that the Vivendi board of directors hopes to see.

However, there are not so many good things in the world that they are unwilling to delegate power and want a professional manager who is excellent enough.

In private, I have discussed how to deal with Disney after being acquired by Vivendi Group more than once. Amy just mentioned this matter to Simon at this time. Seeing that his boss had already known it, he stopped talking, and said: "Eisner is trying to invest in the Internet field. He has partnered with Orwitz and has also finalized a project. I had dinner with Nancy at Morton Restaurant last night, and happened to meet them and chatted about it. It was a very interesting idea."

Simon was also a little surprised and asked, "Is Eisner's illness cured?"

Amy nodded: "It's no big deal now, but the fourth-level bypass surgery was very risky, so it's okay to hold on to it."

Michael Eisner had a heart attack that was relapsed when he heard that Daenerys Entertainment would establish Universal Studios in Europe. He was almost rescued at that time. Simon had already learned about this.

Disney President Frank Wells, who should have died in a ski accident last year, escaped due to the influence of Simon, the big butterfly. If Eisner died unexpectedly due to the news he released, Simon would inevitably feel a little guilty. The legitimate business competition has not reached the level of life-threatening, not to mention that Hollywood looks up and down.

Simon nodded slightly, skillfully used chopsticks to pick up some Chinese fried noodles on the plate, and asked with a smile: "What project did Eisner invest in?"

Amy picked up the juice and took a sip of it and said, "It should be considered a workplace social networking website. This is the idea that Orwitz came up with. You also know that Orwitz is very good at managing connections. He feels that he can completely move the real connection business model to the Internet. Unlike those recruitment websites that can only submit resumes in a targeted manner, this workplace social networking website allows users to directly establish their own connections in certain circles and display their resumes more intuitively. Moreover, after forming circles, they can also obtain more accurate recruitment or application goals through recommendations between each other, and social network members can also recommend each other."

Simon, opposite the dining table, became more and more familiar with him, and soon understood.

Isn't this the LinkedIn in my memory?

In history, because of the failure of the internal power struggle at Time Warner, Terry Semer left to serve as CEO of Hollywood Yahoo. This time, Semer's internal advantages in Time Warner Group are becoming more and more obvious due to the support of Daenerys Entertainment, and is likely to become the next chairman.

Unexpectedly, Michael Eisner, who left Disney ten years early, turned to Silicon Valley.

After Amy finished speaking, she saw Simon silent and asked, "Simon, what do you think?"

Simon came to his senses and nodded with a smile: "A very good idea, the key is whether they can find a suitable business model."

The former LinkedIn acquisition by Microsoft for a huge sum of more than $26 billion in 2016 shows the feasibility of the concept of this workplace social platform. The key is whether Eisner and Orwitz can find a business solution that can make the website sustainable in the future.

Ultimately, ideas are never worth a fortune.

Just like LinkedIn, Simon didn’t believe that there would be only one workplace social networking website in Silicon Valley, but LinkedIn eventually stood out.

Opposite the dining table, Amy paused when she heard Simon say this and said, "So, Simon, are you interested in this project?"

Simon looked up at Amy, as if he understood something, and smiled, "Eisner and the others asked you to ask?"

Amy shook her head and said, "No, but I think since they said so much to me last night, I probably want you to know. Maybe, if you are willing to invest, that's better."

Simon said: "Eisner and the other two should not be short of money, right?"

Amy shrugged: "You know, it's not just a matter of money."

Simon thought for a little while and understood roughly.

First, Amy Pascal, Michael Eisner, Michael Orwitz, are all Jewish.

This is a typical mutual help between Jews without conflicts of interest.

Secondly, as Amy said, if Simon had not been intentionally known, Eisner and the others would not have described their project as detailed at a dinner they encountered. This was obviously to attract Simon's attention.

As for the money issue.

Of course, Eisner and Orwitz are not short of money, and it will definitely be easy to spend millions of dollars in startup funds. However, the two obviously still maintain a certain inertial mindset in Hollywood.

The first principle of investing in Hollywood movies: Never spend your own money.

The same is true for Silicon Valley.

Everyone only sees the success of websites such as Yahoo, Google, and Amazon, but they don’t know that behind these successful people, more than 90% of the projects were finally wasted, and investors did not even hear the sound of millions of funds.

Moreover, if Simon is willing to invest in Eisner and the others, it will not only ease some of the previous frictions between the two sides, but this project will also be supported by the Westeros system.

This is the most important point.

There are more than one image sharing website in Silicon Valley now. Why is Instagram, which has only been established for half a year, so is it really so outstanding in its business model?

The answer is no.

At least most of them are negative.

The key is the entire Westeros system to fully support Instagram in hardware, software and network traffic.

Speaking of which, Simon has always admired the latter very much for Eisner and Orwitz.

After the rise of the Westeros system, Simon occasionally considered recruiting Orwitz to join, because the huge Westeros system had very large interpersonal relationships that needed to be reconciled and maintained, and in this regard, Orwitz happened to be at the expert level.

However, ideas are just ideas after all, and there will be many obstacles in the process of putting them into action.

For example, loyalty.

Because it is not a direct lineman like Amy Pascal who has risen from scratch, lacks the recognition and loyalty formed by long-term running-in, and inviting the other party to maintain a very sensitive system and personal connection, it seems very rash.

In any case, Simon admires Orwitz very much.

As for Eisner, there was no friction between the two sides before. It was just that because of some information in their memory, Simon didn't have much favoritism for Eisner.

Now, many things have changed, and Simon has never been a petty person. After thinking for a moment, he said, "Since that's the case, please help me ask. If you have time on the weekend, have coffee and chat."

Amy nodded and wrote down.

Seeing Amy's point-stop, Simon became interested again and said, "In this way, for their website, I can give a name first, LinkedIn," and said, while writing the word on the dining table, with a joke: "The most troublesome thing about Silicon Valley is to name it now, because over the years, slightly normal words have been registered by various companies, and I guess this one is definitely not."

Amy noticed Simon's gesture just now.

LinkedIn, it is obviously a combination of two words LinkedIn, and the literal translation is "connection", which is very consistent with the idea of ​​a workplace social networking website.

Understand that his boss's naming habit has occurred again, Amy smiled and agreed, "I will tell them."

As they chatted like this, the lunch time ended and the two of them returned to their offices.

The afternoon work is other than Daenerys Entertainment.

Simon returned to the office and the female assistant reminded Celia Miller, who had returned to New York, to be online and the documents they would like to read in the afternoon were listed on the desk.

First of all, there are several important cooperation results negotiated with Ukraine during this period.

For the Rovno Nuclear Power Plant, with the help of the Westeros system, the First Boston team finally finalized a bond issuance contract of up to $1 billion with the Ukrainian Nuclear Power Company to spend on the construction of Unit 4 of the Rovno Nuclear Power Plant and the renovation of the power grid line between the nuclear power plant and the city of Rifni.

In Ukraine today, no investor dares to rashly lend him $1 billion.

Therefore, in addition to the credit guarantee of the Westeros system, Ukrainian nuclear power companies have also carried out actual pledge operations, with the goal of 50% of the equity of the Rovno Prefecture Nuclear Power Plant. Once Ukrainian nuclear power cannot repay the principal and interest of the bond on time, the First Boston will have the right to auction 50% of Ukrainian nuclear power's equity to raise funds to repay investors.

Not only that, the annual interest rate for the 1 billion US dollar bond this time is as high as 12%, far exceeding the industry average.

You should know that the current 10-year Treasury bond interest rate in the United States is only 2.8%, and the 10-year bond interest rate of high-quality enterprises is generally only about 5%.

Although Ukraine's economy is not good, in fact, the repayment capacity of Ukrainian nuclear power is still very guaranteed. With the power generation of other traditional power plants in Ukraine, only Ukrainian nuclear power maintains a stable power generation of 50 billion kWh every year, with annual revenue equivalent to about 3 billion US dollars.

As long as such a monopoly state-owned enterprise with stable income can be guaranteed, even if it offers 5% annual interest, no one will take over it.

The reason why there is such a bond financing plan that Simon thinks is quite stupid is that on the one hand, Ukraine obviously lacks experience in dealing with national financial giants and instinctively puts itself in a weak position that lacks confidence. People are international financial giants, so of course they say whatever they say.

On the other hand, probably, enough money has been given.

Simon often heard similar destructive things in his past memory.

Now finalizing such a contract is nothing more than cutting off a piece of funds that can be handed over to the national finance for national economy and people's livelihood every year to repay debts. Anyway, Ukraine's finances are already full of holes, so I don't care about it anymore.

Moreover, according to the initial estimate, this $1 billion is actually completely unnecessary, and $700 million is enough.

The current increase of US$300 million is mainly used to purchase power generation equipment for Westinghouse Electric in the United States. Because the price of Westinghouse Equipment is twice as high as that of Ukraine.

Simon also knew that this could be bargained, and the amount of bargaining could be quite large.

However, obviously, if you give enough money, no one wants to bargain. Anyway, it’s all the money of the country.

Not only that, high-priced imported American equipment can also be used as publicity. Of course, American equipment is more safe. Everyone can sleep with confidence and there will never be a second Chernobyl accident.

This is not Simon's imagination, but the public opinion trend released by local Ukrainian newspapers.

The effect is very good.

Now Ukraine, due to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the failure of its national economy, is basically in the mindset that the United States is good at everything and its own country is useless. It will be destined to be difficult to get rid of in many years to come.

Of course, these have nothing to do with Simon.

During the telephone discussion, Simon just asked Celia to set up a special financial supervision team to ensure that the $1 billion bond financing is spent where it is spent. After all, whether it is the construction of Unit 4 of the Rovno State Nuclear Power Plant or the power grid transformation between the nuclear power plant and Rivni, it will ultimately be used in the layout of the Westeros system in Rovno State.

Although the Westeros system actually paid nothing during this bond financing process, it still has the power to regulate because it relies on its own credibility.

Even if all parties inevitably have their own small abacus, they will definitely hope to spend the money as much as possible.

In addition to the nuclear power plant, there is also the matter of Nokia establishing a mobile phone production factory in Rifney.
Chapter completed!