Chapter Five Hundred and Eighty Third You Come and I Go
Chapter 583
Before Christmas, before the two-week North American holiday to be exact on December 20, Eric had only left East Hampton once, mainly to attend Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction in New York. 's premiere.
As Quentin's work that established his status as a Hollywood ghost director, Pulp Fiction has already aroused overwhelming praise in the North American film critics during the trial screening stage, and after its release, it has aroused a strong response among movie fans.
Although Firefly Pictures only gave the film 1,300 screens for its premiere, considering the subject matter of Pulp Fiction, Pulp Fiction grossed nearly $17 million in its first week, surpassing $13,000 in a single venue. It easily broke through the $10,000 big-selling movie standard in a single studio, and even surpassed the comedy movies promoted by other film companies in the Christmas file. After the announcement of the nominations for the American Film and Television Golden Globe Awards on December 23, Pulp Fiction, which received six Golden Globe nominations, did not drop at the box office in the second week, but rose to $21 million. and
Because the "Pulp Fiction" series starred Bruce Willis, John Travolta and other Hollywood superstars to star in Quentin's "Reservoir Dogs" fame, the cost of "Pulp Fiction" is not enough To $10 million, although Firefly invested more than $10 million in publicity and distribution expenses in order to make Pulp Fiction a popular movie during the awards season, the two-week box office performance of Pulp Fiction has allowed Firefly to recover all the costs while realizing it. Partially profitable.
"Interview with the Vampire", released a week after "Pulp Fiction", also achieved dazzling box office results. The box office results of more than 47 million US dollars in the first week once again proved that Tom Cruise's box office appeal is still good.
However, after the release of "Interview with the Vampire", Amy Pascal, who had been negotiating with Cruise about the actor of "Mission Impossible", regretted calling East Hampton, saying that Tom Cruise In the end, he refused to cooperate with Flower Pictures, and was personally recruited by Shirley Lansing, who had just taken office in Paramount Pictures, and took Cruise-Wagner Productions to the old club Paramount again.
Because of the Hollywood tough guy movie trend led by Stallone and Schwarzenegger in the 1980s, Hollywood may lack other types of stars in the 1990s, but only action stars. Eric can think of a series of candidates who are now comparable to Cruise and are very suitable for the hero of "Mission Impossible", Kevin Costner, Liam Neeson, Nicolas Cage, Keanu Li. Weiss and more. Hence the rejection of Cruise. Eric didn't feel too much emotion, just randomly ordered Amy Pascal to contact other stars. The only thing Eric was curious about was the strength of that irritable old man Redstone. This time the two sides can cooperate for a few years. Moreover, without "Mission Impossible", the ace series that Paramount can't stop, once Cruise and Paramount have a deadlock again, Eric is also very curious about whether Cruise can make a comeback.
Of course, this curiosity was quickly thrown away by Eric.
While women and children enjoyed Christmas, all kinds of news kept coming from Los Angeles.
Warren Buffett stayed in Los Angeles until December 27. During this period, he negotiated with Katzenberg several times. In the end, the two sides still did not reach any agreement. Although Buffett made some concessions, the conditions he offered were still very difficult. It is acceptable that on December 27, Eric also deliberately talked with Buffett in Los Angeles by phone for two hours in East Hampton. However, the proportion of equity that Firefly needs to pay has been reduced to 40%. According to the market value of the TV network at this time, it is equivalent to exchanging 7 billion US dollars for 40% of the shares of Firefly Pictures. Of course, Eric could not accept it, and the two sides had no intention of discussing any more. Buffett returned to Omaha that day. Firefly Pictures has also begun to formally prepare for a public acquisition.
The New Year's holiday has just passed, and Chris, who has been preparing for several months, formally requested to enter the LTD board of directors with the shares in his hands, and publicly initiated the acquisition of LTD with Brighton Fashion Company as the main body.
Although Leslie Wexner of LTD has realized the abnormality of LTD's share price a few years ago, Chris is very careful throughout the process. It was not until the news was made public that Leslie Wexner realized the seriousness of the matter. At this time, Chris already owned 12% of the shares of LTD, and unknowingly, he had become Leslie Wexner's leader. the second largest shareholder. Although it is still far from Leslie Wexner's 35% shareholding, Leslie Wexner is very clear that once Chris successfully enters the LTD board of directors and attracts other shareholders to join his camp, then Leslie Wexner is likely to lose control of LTD.
Therefore, Leslie Wexner immediately launched the poison pill program. It is publicly stated that if Chris's holdings exceed 15%, LTD will issue additional shares to major shareholders at a price much lower than the public stock price to dilute Chris's shares.
Chris, who had been prepared for a long time, fought back at the first time. The lawyer representative of Brighton Fashion Company stated at the press conference that Leslie Wexner's behavior had damaged the right of most shareholders to freely decide whether to sell the company's shares. , and is a 'barbaric plunder' of other LTD shareholders who cannot accept the low-priced additional offering, thus requiring federal regulators to stop the conduct of LTD management.
Leslie Wexner denounced Brighton Fashion Company and Firefly Investments for hostile takeovers. In order to show the legitimacy of his actions to the public, he decided to hold an extraordinary general meeting of shareholders at the LTD headquarters on January 20 to allow shareholders to represent freely. Vote on whether to start the poison pill program.
But then, Brighton Fashion Company and Firefly Investment published the detailed development plan of the company after completing the acquisition of LTD in the famous financial magazine "Business Week", stating that their own acquisitions are normal commercial mergers and acquisitions, not hostile acquisitions.
After Chris submitted a series of materials prepared in advance, before the LTD extraordinary general meeting, it was announced that LTD's "poison pill plan" would be invalid even if it was voted by the extraordinary general meeting.
Subsequently, Chris, as the joint representative of Brighton Fashion Company and Firefly Investments, proposed the acquisition price of $19 per share to LTD for the first time, and announced the colleagues of Brighton Fashion Company’s annual financial report last year. A series of financing plans for acquisitions.
And Leslie Wexner simply quoted a high price of $35 per share. More than twice the share price of LTD, Leslie Wexner was immediately judged by a business magazine as 'out of his mind' when the offer came out.
For a time, the acquirer and the acquiree will come and go. Lots of fun.
Although this business is not too big under the wave of mergers and acquisitions in the past two years, since junk bond king Michael Milken was imprisoned and corporate sniper Ron Perelman put away his minions and kept a low profile, it has It is also the first high-profile leveraged buyout on Wall Street in recent times, because it is not clear how much chips Firefly Investments and Brighton Fashion have privately. Some people even compared it to another Revlon acquisition. Years ago. Ron Perelman took over Revlon, which has a market value of $1 billion, for $150 million.
In order to cooperate with the plans of Firefly Pictures, Eric chose to attend the Golden Globe Awards this year, so he returned to Los Angeles in mid-January. However, Eric, like many people, always pays attention to Chris and Rice Leigh Wexner's series of tricks, although he is a layman, Eric is also very clear that Leslie Wexner has fallen behind.
However, Firefly Pictures is also making intense preparations for the public acquisition. Eric didn't have much time to think about these things either.
After the New Year's holiday, Firefly Pictures released the company's 1994 film list for the first time. In addition to "Saving Private Ryan", "The Lion King", "True Lies" and other major films, it also includes the new line label A reboot of some of its classic horror films. At the same time, the TV drama department of Firefly Pictures officially announced that after the fifth season of "Friends", Firefly Pictures will terminate the contract with Fox Television Network. While continuing to produce "Friends", the Firefly TV drama department will develop several other TV series. and reality shows to 'expand their own network business'.
Although not openly pierced that layer of window paper. But at this point in the whole of North America, anyone who pays a little attention to the news knows that it is only a matter of time before Firefly Pictures launches a public acquisition of the TV network.
After Firefly Pictures released the 1994 film list, the latest issue of Variety Magazine was just published in early February. It was immediately announced that it was out of stock, and the magazine had to urgently print 100,000 copies of the magazine for emergency use.
The reason why this movie magazine, which is only of interest to Hollywood professionals, was suddenly out of stock, was because Firefly Pictures publicly released the 1993 financial report of Firefly Pictures in Variety magazine for the first time.
Throughout 1993, Firefly Pictures released a total of 28 films, an average of more than two per month. Firefly Pictures finally made an astonishing $447 million at the North American box office because of this year's "Jurassic Park", as well as "Clash of the Earth", "A Bug's Life" and "Detective Plane 2", "The Detective Plane Head 2", "About Us" which will be released at the end of the year. Pulp Fiction and Interview with the Vampire were huge box office successes. Once again won 29% of the box office share, the annual North American box office is expected to reach 1.74 billion US dollars, and the entire North American 1993 year because of the stimulation of the blockbuster "event film" "Jurassic Park", the box office exceeded 6 billion for the first time. Dollar.
Because of the strong locomotive effect caused by the success of films such as "Jurassic Park", Firefly Pictures' net profit in 1993 reached a new high of US$1.19 billion, an increase of US$200 million over last year. The net profit is only a slight advantage of 30 million US dollars more than Time Warner. Last year, due to the huge impact of the death of Steve Ross, who had been in charge of Warner for decades, the net profit of Time Warner Group did not rise but fell, only 870 million US dollars. Firefly Pictures is well ahead of Time Warner by $320 million in profit.
The five companies ranked after Time Warner, Universal, Paramount, Fox, Columbia and MGM, have a total profit of less than 2 billion US dollars, because under the toss of Peter Cooper, although the "Broken" cooperating with Firefly at the end of the year Arrow's box office is good, but other Colombian films rarely make profits. Sony Columbia is still losing money overall. Although MGM Pictures has regained some vitality under the leadership of John Carley and others, it is still not as good as some prosperous secondaries. The total number of films produced and distributed by MGM in 1993 is less than a fraction of that of Firefly.
When the entire capital market was studying the annual financial report of Firefly Pictures in 1993, Firefly Pictures also officially submitted an acquisition application to the board of directors of the TV network in early February. Compared with the fierce confrontation caused by Chris' acquisition of LTD , the reaction will be much milder.
As if in response to Firefly's release of its 1993 financial report, the network also disclosed the network's 1993 profits in advance.
Although it is not comparable to Firefly Pictures' total profit of US$1.19 billion, the TV network also achieved a net profit of US$520 million in 1993, ranking first among the four major TV networks in North America, accounting for 23% of the market share. You must know that although there are only four national public television networks in North America, since the emergence of premium cable TV in the 1980s, a large number of premium cable TV programs have joined the competition for prime-time viewing, and the market shares of several major TV networks have continued to decline. , the TV network can achieve a market share of 23%, has surpassed, CBS and Fox TV network a lot.
After Firefly Pictures publicly announced the takeover offer, the TV network also responded quickly. The TV network's board seat and Tom Murphy personally called Eric and said that if Eric planned to pay cash and stock If the TV network is acquired through the method, then, based on the stock price of the TV network at this time, Firefly Pictures must first bear the 35% capital gains tax arising from the cash transaction. That is to say, the cash acquisition of Firefly Pictures shall not be lower than Yu TV network's share price at this time 1.35 times.
After this period of continuous rise in stock prices, the network's stock price has reached a new high, with a market value of an astonishing $11.2 billion, nearly $2 billion higher than it was in the middle of last year. However, Eric also knew that this was inevitable, so he agreed on the spot. Right now, the most important thing is of course the acquisition as soon as possible. If this acquisition turns into a long-term tug of war, then Eric would rather Abandon the transfer target. (To be continued.)