The merger negotiations between GE and Time Warner are still in tug of war, and a large-scale media industry merger and acquisition have been finalized again.

On September 11, Westinghouse Electric and CBS Group held a joint press conference at the CBS headquarters in the Rockefeller Center in New York, announcing that Westinghouse Electric will acquire CBS Group for a cash offer of $9 billion, and also assume the total debt of CBS Group of a total of $1.9 billion, with a total transaction amount of $10.9 billion.

Some time ago, when news of Daenerys Entertainment's intention to acquire CBS Group went viral, CBS's market value peaked at $8.7 billion. If the transaction came true, it would be difficult for Daenerys Entertainment to win CBS within a quotation of $11 billion.

Daenerys Entertainment turned to Metropolitan ABC Group with a flick, and CBS's stock price plummeted. In this transaction, Westinghouse Electric only gave a 23% premium based on the stock price before the merger and acquisition was announced. Without debt, the amount of $9 billion in merger and acquisition was $2 billion less than the expected offer of CBS's acquisition by Daenerys.

This is taken for granted by many media.

How could Westinghouse Electric, which currently has a market value of only over $40 billion, be comparable to Daenerys Entertainment?

Since Daenerys can't take advantage of this ride, he can sell $9 billion, which is already a very high price compared to CBS, which was still hovering at the market value of $5 billion at the beginning of the year.

With the announcement of the news of CBS' change of ownership, it is basically announced that the three old American TV networks are all affiliated with the big companies and are unlikely to change again in the short term. People with a keen impression of the media industry have even realized another significance behind these changes.

The monopoly division of public television networks by large corporate giants.

Although the market share of public television networks is constantly eroded by cable TV, no one can deny that the three old TV networks play a crucial role in influencing and controlling American public opinion.

These are the three loudspeakers that can advertise nationwide, which are stronger than any traditional paper media’s communication ability.

The Internet has risen, the paper media has declined, and the public television networks have been divided. The American media industry has once again returned to the era of oligopolies since the decades before the 1990s.

Monopoly means losing freedom.

Losing freedom of the press.

However, this industry trend of long-term separation will be consistent, but no one can stop it.

On the other hand, another "schooler" of CBS, Viacom Group, lost in this merger dispute. When the news of Westinghouse Electric and CBS Group announced that its share price fell sharply by 6.1% that day, missing the opportunity to transform CBS into a media giant. Viacom's future fate is likely to only become the acquired person and is unlikely to expand on a large scale.

Agitated, Summer Redstone publicly stated that the afternoon of the same day that it would file a lawsuit with Westinghouse Electric and CBS Group, accusing the two companies of fraud against Viacom during the merger and acquisition negotiations, and intends to prevent the final conclusion of the merger and acquisition at all costs.

The outside world was confused about this.

However, Simon got the news that Redstone was fooled by CBS's major shareholder Larry Tiss during the transaction negotiations. Tiss promised that Redstone could agree to the other party's share exchange and merger offer as long as it increased the offer to $9.2 billion. The two parties reached a tacit understanding and in a blink of an eye the news was handed over to Westinghouse, forcing Westinghouse to increase the offer from the previously held US$8.7 billion to $9 billion at the last moment.

It seems that it is not as high as Viacom's $9.2 billion offer, but Westinghouse gives an all-cash transaction plan.

During the process of corporate mergers and acquisitions, unless you are very optimistic about the development prospects of the two companies after the merger, most of the shareholders of the acquired companies will tend to get more cash and put them in the pocket.

Viacom has raised its offer to $9.2 billion, which seems to allow the former CBS shareholders to obtain more stocks of the new company after the merger. The question is, no one can guarantee how the brand-new Viacom will develop after the merger of the two companies, what if the stock price plummets?

You should know that because of the simultaneous purchase of two companies, CBS's stock price was seriously overvalued, and the bubble may be squeezed out after the merger.

Therefore, as long as you are not too stupid, you know how to choose a $9.2 billion share exchange merger and $9 billion all-cash acquisition.

As for Lei Shidong's furiousness, he could only furiousness.

Being fooled means being fooled.

Even if you really sue it, it will only become an unresolved and meaningless entanglement.

After all, both parties have not signed a contract.

In the final analysis, Viacom itself is unable to raise enough cash from Wall Street for this merger, and this is also the result of the Westeros system quietly making efforts. Simon did not want to see Viacom acquire CBS from the beginning.

While Westinghouse Electric reached a merger and acquisition agreement with CBS Group, another transaction with a much smaller scale was officially finalized.

After more than two months of low-key negotiations, Apollo Management, a subsidiary of Cersei Capital, acquired IBM's battery R&D and production department for US$1.25 billion. This part of the assets include IBM's total of five battery product R&D teams in North America and overseas, three battery factories in New York, Mexico and China, and, most importantly, a large number of battery-related core patents.

The reason why Simon conducted this transaction in the name of Apollo Management is mainly to facilitate splitting.

At this stage, IBM's battery research and development and production department mainly produces traditional punchable nickel-cadmium batteries for electronic products such as IBM's laptops. This is true for the two factories in Mexico City, Mexico, and Guangdong, China. Only one battery factory that was just established last year in New York State is used to produce the latest lithium-ion batteries, and the scale is far less than that of two large battery factories in Mexico and China.

Simon took over IBM's battery research and development and production department mainly for lithium batteries.

As a veteran electronics giant, IBM's foundation is no less than a new electronics manufacturer in Europe and Asia. After Sony first launched commercial lithium-ion batteries in 1992, IBM also completed the development of related products last year and established a lithium battery factory in Albany, New York.

After Louis Gowsner was appointed to take over IBM in 1992, he has been streamlining the huge and bloated IBM. IBM's battery department is not a burden to this old giant, but it is not a core business. The revenue and profits it achieves for IBM are not high, and it is a part of the assets that can be divested and retained.

When the Westeros system actively extended an olive branch, Gowsner quickly agreed.

The head of IBM originally wanted to use Westeros halo, just as Welch only wanted to sell half of NBC's equity, to turn the IBM battery department from a sole proprietorship to a joint venture with Westeros system. IBM only holds a stake and leaves the operation to Westeros system.

If it is other circumstances, Simon will agree.

It is difficult for a single battery supplier to survive independently. It is definitely necessary for customers to maintain IBM's stake. In the future, battery companies will be able to obtain large quantities of orders from IBM.

However, since Simon only wants IBM's lithium battery research and development team, patented technology and product factories, he is not interested in the mainstream heavy pollution nickel-cadmium batteries at this stage, and it will not work if he maintains IBM's stake.

After Simon personally made several phone calls with Gouser, the other party finally let go and promised to hand over the battery department to Apollo Management for operation. At the same time, Simon agreed to give IBM Group 25% of its shares in Rectery, a battery company directly established by Westeros.

Recttery is an original vocabulary, derived from Recyclable Battery, following common naming rules in Silicon Valley.

This is also Simon's positioning for the new company.

New technology.

The Recttery headquarters will also be located in Silicon Valley.

It is mainly to ride on the east wind of the new technology industry.

After taking over IBM's battery department, Apollo Management will split and resell all the R&D teams, patented technologies and product factories related to lithium batteries and then resell them to Recttery, and then operate the remaining traditional nickel-cadmium battery business alone.

Even if lithium batteries are an inevitable trend in the future, traditional nickel-cadmium batteries still have a survival cycle of at least 10 years, and at this stage it is the mainstream equipment for various portable electronic products. Therefore, it is not difficult for this part of the business to make a difference.

As an IBM sub-department, it was dragged down by IBM's solidification system and was not popular for a long time. This is not something that Gowsner could change in just three years. After completing the split, the nickel-cadmium battery business will also set up a separate company. Apollo Management plans to provide corporate efficiency, expand production, and gain more market share through several years of operation. Next, it either sells it in packages, or chooses to go public, and finally cashes out and leave the market.

Standard one private equity merger and acquisition restructuring operation.

At the same time, it inherits IBM's full set of lithium battery R&D team, patented technology and production factories, and is no longer constrained by IBM's bloated and huge corporate system. It also has a wide potential demand from companies such as IBM, Tinkobaier and even Nokia. There is no need to worry about market issues. Recttery can devote itself to the research and development and production of the latest lithium battery.

There are a lot of things happening in this world every moment.

In recent years, the American public has gradually discovered that more and more major events happening around them seem to be related to the Westeros system.

Because the subsequent split and reorganization plan is not known, Simon's potential layout is even more confidential, and IBM's battery sales did not cause much trouble. Instead, another Flas***, based on the Facebook social network of Igrit, was launched, and has attracted national attention.

This is "Happy Ranch", which has been developed and has been shelved for a long time in order to maintain the status of "Happy Farm".

In fact, it is also to build momentum for Igret's IPO roadshow.

Although a corporate IPO has to enter a period of silence for several months after submitting its prospectus, it does not mean that a company cannot stimulate the market through some business operations.

Therefore, "Happy Ranch", which is fully connected with "Happy Farm", was launched on September 22.

It happened to be 18 months after "Happy Farm" was launched.

When the "Happy Farm" game operation team decided to launch "Happy Farm" when the game began to decline, in order to provide timely help, rather than adding icing on the cake, the estimated launch time was about 12 to 18 months for "Happy Farm".

The result is that with the careful care of the operation team, the life cycle of "Happy Farm" is far beyond many people's imagination.

The operation team initially predicted that the peak user scale of "Happy Farm" should be around 100 million. As of the launch of "Happy Farm", the total number of users of "Happy Farm" worldwide has reached 149 million. Even though the game revenue has passed its peak period, with the huge user scale of the whole nation, in the past week before "Happy Farm" was launched, "Happy Farm" still brought US$21.79 million in revenue through prop sales.

This is the 11-month period after Happy Farm's single-week revenue exceeded 20 million in November last year. At the Easter event at the beginning of the year, Happy Farm also set a record of 33.12 million US dollars per week.

According to comprehensive statistics, from the opening on March 25 last year to the present, in 18 months, "Happy Farm" has earned a total of US$1.376 billion.

It's a miracle.

Although it is incomparable to the games such as "Elf DreamCapo" that brought billions or even tens of billions of dollars to game companies in Simon's memory, the problem is that the revenue generated by those games is a whole series of revenue accumulation over decades and even surrounding areas.

"Happy Farm", which is also a phenomenon, is just a game with no sequel, and the game's revenue exceeded US$1 billion, which took less than two years.

Such dazzling results are far superior to various farm games in Simon's memory, but it is not surprising.

Because this is a game that Igrit, who currently accounts for most users in the global Internet market, has fully supported.

As of September 1995, the number of netizens around the world has reached nearly 400 million. Unlike the diversification of the Internet industry in history, almost all global Internet users at this stage cannot avoid Igret, so it is impossible to bypass "Happy Farm".

Not only that, the game was successful after it was launched last year. Although the initial development cost was only 1.5 million US dollars, the two giants Daenerys and Igret spared no effort to invest in the subsequent game.

In order to ensure the "ecological balance" within the game to the greatest extent and avoid the disadvantages of excessive virtual items output or rapid upgrades, the operation team specially recruited a team of top mathematicians and sociologists to study and count the data involved in this game and continuously optimize it, and spared no effort to ensure the user's gaming experience.

In order to make the in-game planting activities closer to reality, Happy Farm also has a team of botanists consultants.

It is precisely in these details that, after "Happy Farm" was launched in 18, although the user growth rate has slowed down, it still has not shown any significant decline, and has become an indispensable national pastime for Internet users to surf online.

The launch of "Happy Ranch" is mainly to build momentum for Tinkobaier's IPO.

In addition, Daenerys Entertainment will consider that it will launch its first fiscal year full-year financial report next month. After last year's IPO, Daenerys Entertainment adjusted the group's financial statistics cycle from natural year to October of each year to September of the following year, which is more in line with the schedule rules of the entertainment industry.

Because it is a game that is directly linked to "Happy Farm", some props and virtual currencies of "Happy Farm" can also be used directly in "Happy Farm". Therefore, although it is a seemingly simple Flas***, after it was launched on September 22, it became a collective carnival on the entire Internet platform.

September 22nd happens to be Friday.

After the early large-scale publicity warm-up, "Happy Ranch" was launched on time at 8 o'clock that night. As of 8 o'clock the next morning, the number of activated users of "Happy Ranch" exceeded 40 million.

Subsequently, as of 12:00 p.m. on Sunday, September 24, the number of activated users of "Happy Ranch" successfully exceeded 100 million for three days on the weekend, and finally reached 107 million, equivalent to more than two-thirds of the 149 million "Happy Ranch" users opened "Happy Ranch". The operation team announced on the official Facebook account of "Happy Ranch" at 12:00 on Sunday that the number of users applying for this game will exceed 100 million.

On the first weekend of its launch, "Happy Ranch" also made a good start, directly breaking the single-week revenue record of US$33.12 million created by "Happy Farm" during Easter in the first half of the year. In three days, the game's revenue reached US$36.75 million, successfully becoming another cash cow for Daenerys and Egret that makes more money than drug trafficking.
Chapter completed!