Chapter 601 Acquisition Negotiations

The only regret for the Marvel Universe now is that characters including Spider-Man and the X-Men are no longer in Marvel's hands.

Especially Spider-Man, who is one of the most popular superheroes in Marvel comics.

But Spider-Man is in the hands of Sony, and the X-Men and Fantastic Four are in the hands of News Corporation. At this time, the film and television entertainment part of News Corporation has not yet been separated to form 21st Century Fox. If you want to take it back, it is not possible. With such an easy thing, Barron can only see if there is any chance in this subprime mortgage crisis.

In addition to Marvel Studios, MGM Pictures' "The Twilight Saga" Part 2 and "007: Quantum of Solace" have also been filmed and will be released at the end of this year.

In addition, the reboot series of "Rocky" is also in progress.

It can be said that through the success of this series of movies, Marvel-MGM Group has begun to embark on the road to revitalization.

"One more thing is about Netflix. They have agreed to our request for a shareholding..."

Prior to this, DS Capital held less than 15% of Netflix's shares, which has made them the largest shareholder of Netflix.

Netflix's video platform also developed quite well, until... the Hulu website was established.

Just last October, Hulu, a video website jointly invested by NBCUniversal, News Corporation and Disney, began its trial operation.

At the beginning, not many people in Silicon Valley and even the entire IT industry were optimistic about it - people thought it was just another "dying struggle" of old media.

But when Hulu ended its testing and had 5 million users, this video website invested by traditional entertainment media began to receive countless praises. It was considered to be the most successful integration of the traditional TV and film industries to the Internet so far. The case is a powerful challenge to YouTube and Netflix, and may even have a disruptive impact on the entire video industry.

For Hulu's success, the most important thing is not Woaw's YouTube, but Netflix.

Because in addition to NBC and Fox content, Hulu also cooperates with more than 80 content producers such as Sony, Warner Bros., Lionsgate Pictures and NBA, and large and small websites such as America Online, Yahoo, MSN and MySpace are all on its channels Partner.

Being able to have such powerful content and channels is also due to the influence of the three major shareholders of the Hulu platform.

But before that, the content played on Netflix’s video platform was mainly provided by these TV station groups and film companies. Now that the Hulu platform has appeared, it is difficult for Netflix to guarantee that in a competitive situation Continuity of own content.

In preparation for a rainy day, Hastings, the founder of Netflix, began to contact content providers, hoping to obtain a more permanent and stable source of content.

From the perspective of Marvel-MGM owned by Blue Valley Capital, it should be on the side of the Hulu platform - but unfortunately, when the Hulu platform was established, Marvel-MGM It was not noticed by the big guys in Hollywood, so it did not become a shareholder of Hulu.

Accordingly, although Marvel-MGM has received an invitation from the Hulu platform to cooperate with its content, they still have another choice, and that is Netflix.

Of course, the premise is whether Netflix can give up enough shares to tie up the interests of both parties.

It is obvious that Hastings made a wise choice under such circumstances. He agreed to Blue Valley Capital’s investment and stake, and prepared to issue new shares to Blue Valley Capital, bringing his Netflix shares to 15% of the total share capital after the additional issuance.

If this cooperation can be achieved, then the share ratio of Netflix controlled by Barron will reach 27.41% (the original 14.6% share of Netflix held by DS Holdings will be diluted to 12.41% after this additional issuance) ), becoming Netflix’s largest shareholder.

However, because Blue Valley Capital does not have a direct relationship with Barron's on the surface, in the eyes of others, Blue Valley Capital and DS Holdings are just two separate shareholding parties.

…

There had been no news from Amanda since she left Barron's last time.

Barron just came to see him in California from Lydia Hearst and learned that when talking to his cousin on the phone, Amanda said she didn't want to see anyone now and was going to go out to relax...

In this case, Barron could only ask Lydia to pay more attention to Amanda's news, and then spend a few days with the girl.

When the time entered July, the impact of the subprime mortgage crisis continued to expand.

Now almost all eyes are on Lehman Brothers.

Lehman Brothers’ stock price has been falling since last year. In more than two months from the end of April to early July this year, Lehman Brothers lost a total of nearly US$4 billion!

So at the end of June, Fuld, the boss of Lehman Brothers, began to save himself.

He was preparing to sell 55% of his asset management business and establish a new company to divest his US$30 billion in commercial real estate assets.

But this measure had no effect at all. At this time, investors no longer believed that Lehman Brothers could get out of the predicament through this method.

Under this circumstance, Lehman Brothers began to put itself on the shelf.

At this time, there were still many people interested in Lehman Brothers, one of the five major investment banks on Wall Street. The parties involved in the negotiation to acquire Lehman Brothers included the Development Bank of Korea, Bank of America, Barclays Bank and Standard Chartered Bank.

The first party Lehman Brothers negotiated with was the Development Bank of Korea.

However, this negotiation was not smooth, and could even be called difficult.

According to the news obtained by Barron, the Development Bank of Korea was willing to acquire the controlling stake of Lehman Brothers at a price of US$6.40 per share - this price was 30% higher than the current share price of Lehman Brothers, and the Development Bank of Korea believed that it had given enough premium.

But on the side of Lehman Brothers, its boss Fold insisted that the Development Bank of Korea needed to acquire it at US$17.50 per share...

This price is equivalent to more than 3.5 times the current share price of Lehman Brothers!

Just when their negotiations were deadlocked, the South Korean financial regulatory authorities publicly warned on July 5 that South Korean banks should consider financial risks when acquiring overseas bank assets.

Under domestic pressure and Lehman Brothers' insistence on not lowering the price, the Development Bank of Korea finally announced that it would give up its acquisition of Lehman Brothers.

Next, Lehman Brothers began to negotiate with the remaining acquirers, including Bank of America, Barclays Bank and Standard Chartered Bank.