Top of the big era

Many business tycoons have multiple companies under their names. Li Chaoren once indirectly or directly controlled 22 listed companies. His business scope is the largest in the world.

For Zhou Buqi, although he may have to divide his energy into four parts to manage Ziweixing, Ziweixing International, Ziweixing Global and Ziweixing Digital Media, in fact, only Ziweixing really wants him to focus on the business. global.

Other companies just point in a direction and let others do it.

Needless to say, Ziweixing and Ziweixing International, Zhou Buqi has laid the foundation in the past few years. Ziweixing Digital Media is actually very simple.

First of all, Ziweixing Digital Media is almost a monopoly company.

It's not that Zhou Buqi wants to monopolize it, it's really that others can't do it even if they want to. Even if some companies in Europe think this direction is good and want to rush in to get a share of the pie, they don’t have the strength.

Finding the entry point for the official website agency business is equivalent to finding a basic business for Ziweixing Digital Media. Even if other businesses do not go smoothly, as long as it becomes the largest agent of the European football official website, it will make a profit of no less than 500 million pounds every year.

For Internet companies, if they want to become giants, they must first have a monopoly-level core business. Google relies on search, Amazon relies on e-commerce, and Yahoo relies on portals. The core business of Ziweixing Digital Media has begun to take shape, which is based on Ziweixing. The official website agency business of MSI cloud computing platform.

The annual profit of 500 million pounds is certainly incomparable to giants such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook, but as long as the core business is grasped, it can become a small giant with a market value of 15 billion to 20 billion pounds.

Also, Ziweixing Digital Media’s business is relatively simpler and more Internet-based.

As for the Internet-based business, Zhou Buqi already knew it very well in the process of founding Ziweixing. It can be developed step by step according to past experience and principles.

It is difficult for Ziweixing Global. The difficulty lies in producing its own content.

Ziweixing Digital Media is engaged in the football business, and its content provider is football matches from World Football Federation, UEFA and the five major leagues... Ziweixing Digital Media does not need to produce content, it only needs to conduct Internet-based production based on existing football content. The market works just fine.

The model of Hollywood giants is very mature and powerful. They are both content parties and channel parties.

But football is different. All the major associations and major competitions are content providers. They are responsible for organizing teams and holding competitions. After producing the content, they do not have their own channels and platforms, so they have to sell football content to third-party channels for distribution. .

In other words, the football model is like DreamWorks and MGM, which are independent studios in Hollywood without distribution companies.

This is easy to deal with.

If the content provider does not have a distribution channel, it must rely heavily on channel providers, who can easily make huge profits from it. For example, BBC Sports and Sky Sports, the two largest sports channels in Europe, have developed by broadcasting football games and reaping the dividends from the low-end of the football industry model.

Therefore, "Internet + football" is relatively easy. You only need to do "Internet" and do not need to do "football". You only need to build a powerful channel platform.

In the "Internet + movie" industry, it is very difficult to compete with Hollywood giants, because in addition to content, Hollywood giants are also channels. This requires Ziweixing Global to be both "Internet" and "movie", and to have a richer and more powerful model to compete with traditional forces.

If you want to develop Ziweixing Global, you must achieve something in "movies".

On June 2, Zhou Buqi met MGM’s new CEO Steven Cooper.

Mr. Cooper is not a Hollywood practitioner. He is a corporate restructuring expert specially invited from Wall Street by the MGM board of directors. He has successfully run the restructuring of Krispy Kreme, the second largest donut chain in the United States, and Enron.

After the two parties met, they had a very happy chat.

Mainly in terms of communication methods, Steven Cooper looked at the problem completely from Zhou Buqi's perspective. He eagerly hoped that Ziweixing Global could acquire MGM. In this way, he would reorganize MGM. If you succeed, you can walk away with a large commission.

Zhou Buqi also knew the exact attitude of Hollywood from his words.

At present, there are indeed several Hollywood giants interested in MGM, but they all have deep concerns. In addition, MGM's creditors only need cash and not stocks, which greatly raises their entry threshold. .

Against the background of the current economic crisis, Hollywood giants are also facing tight cash flow.

Steven Cooper said——

"No entertainment giant will offer more than $2 billion."

"In the past few years, MGM has continued to fail in film production, causing panic in the industry."

"MGM has two parts, one is the production company, and the other is the content library. The Hollywood giant's offer is only for MGM's content library. They believe that MGM's production business is a negative asset."

"MGM's shareholders are worried that the debt problem will affect them, and they all want to take action as soon as possible."

"MGM's creditors would only accept a bankruptcy reorganization or a one-time debt sale."

"MGM is interested in running "The Hobbit"..."

In short, after some communication, Zhou Buqi became more confident about winning MGM.

That night, I called Masayoshi Son and formally approved the Mergers and Acquisitions Committee's first offer for MGM - US$2.5 billion!

MSI Global is officially launched!

The next day, Zhou Buqi went to Silicon Valley with Senior Sister Zhen Yu and Sister Bao.

I’m going to check out Netflix.

By the way, meet Zhou Shaoning.

Aster has recently been entangled by Nokia. There are rumors that Aster mobile phones may have backdoors that will leak user privacy and threaten national security. Zhou Shaoning is communicating with Google to discuss how to deal with it.

After Zhou Buqi passed by, he met Zhou Shaoning in the office of Ziweixing International. "The problem is serious? Isn't it? Finland is a small country, and they can't do many tricks."

Zhou Shaoning said with a smile: "It's not Finland that we're worried about, but this is a signal. What we're worried about is that the United States and the European Union will also use this type of national security excuse in the future."

Zhou Buqi asked curiously: "Have you reserved a backdoor?"

"How can there be?" Zhou Shaoning couldn't laugh or cry, "Isn't this a common routine? It's the same all over the world. Many countries use this excuse of national security to boycott foreign products."

This is not surprising. In order to protect the country's technology industry and resist foreign technology invasion, two methods are usually adopted.

One, the big stick of intellectual property rights.

As soon as this trick came out, most companies died. Just like in the United States in later generations, you can only buy a few mobile phones such as Apple, Samsung, and Motorola through mainstream channels.

Second, national security.

This is even more complicated. It requires a strong public relations platform and political lobbying capabilities, as well as the game of great powers and market exchanges behind it.

Zhou Buqi asked: "Is it solved?"

Zhou Shaoning said: "We have had preliminary contact with Nokia, and we have reached a consensus. They don't want to make a big fuss. After all, Nokia also has a large domestic market. We signed a 3G and 4G patent license of about US$200 million. , the Finnish investigation is over. But this incident reminds us that we must take precautions before they happen."

Zhou Buqi nodded, "Yeah, that's right. What suggestions does Google have?"

Zhou Shaoning twitched the corner of his mouth, "Bad idea! These old Americans are so single-minded that they treat business as business without considering the more complicated regional influences."

"how?"

"They suggested that we donate 30,000 to 50,000 mobile phones to the Pentagon every year."

"Haha, what a good idea."

Zhou Buqi is angry and funny.

From a business logic perspective, this is indeed a good idea.

It's equivalent to bribery in disguise.

Every year, they take out 200 million US dollars of mobile phones and "donate" them to the Pentagon. When they get the benefits, they will naturally be more generous. From a larger perspective, even the Pentagon is using Aster phones, which is very convincing.

The Pentagon believes that the security of Aster mobile phones will not be leaked, and it will be easy to talk to other organizations, institutions, or lobby some countries in the European Union.

For example, Samsung mobile phones in later generations fought fiercely with Apple over patent lawsuits in order to enter the US market. They fought back and forth, and finally gained a firm foothold in the US.

But then Apple has a second trick, which is the potential safety hazard of national security.

Are mobile phones produced in South Korea unsafe?

Samsung saw the trick, and the strategy it gave was this soft bribe to donate to military institutions. Even the U.S. military is using Samsung phones, and there are so many security risks.

Later, another magical scene happened, and Lenovo started to learn it in a decent manner. Lenovo computers and Motorola mobile phones can indeed travel unimpeded in the United States, but they have created greater public opinion risks.

Providing benefits to organizations and institutions that have the right to speak is either in the name of "donation" or "donation", and it is the same all over the world.

But there is a special public opinion field in China. What others can do, one's own family cannot do.

Zhou Buqi was very decisive, "This is nonsense. Don't accept this bad idea just because China and the United States are currently friendly. As long as it has something to do with the military, it is very sensitive. Let's not touch it. Hmm... What about Huawei? Their communication equipment is not the same." It’s a big hit in the world, how do they do it?”

Zhou Shaoning said: "They mainly sell them at super low prices to government agencies, some public welfare organizations, and environmental protection agencies, or partially donate them."

This scope is quite large, Zhou Buqi frowned, "Will the investment be more?"

"Yes, 2-3 times."

"A $500 million annual donation?"

"almost."

"It's okay, don't go with the domestic public opinion." Zhou Buqi nodded, "If you don't want to give up the child, you can't trap the wolf. You can't be stingy on this kind of thing and just use it as protection money."

Zhou Shaoning said with a smile: "We don't need it in recent years. Let's wait until Asda truly becomes a world-class mobile phone manufacturer. If it is a small company that comes and goes, people will not bother to care about us."