Chapter 2053 Shareholders Meeting

The general meeting of shareholders appoints the board of directors, and the board of directors appoints the executives.

Therefore, changes in senior management do not need to go through the shareholders' meeting, but if they are executives who are also directors, they must go through the shareholders' meeting.

This Changyou shareholder meeting was chaired by Zhang Chaoyang.

Zhou Buqi sat side by side with him and sat at the front of the square table. The meaning was very obvious. This was the core issue of this shareholders' meeting - the transfer of power.

It is not only the position of chairman of the board of directors that needs to be adjusted, but the entire board of directors needs to undergo major adjustments.

Under the chairmanship of Zhang Chaoyang, Changyou's shareholders meeting elected a new board of directors, a total of nine people——

Chairman, Zhou Buqi;

Vice Chairman, Zhang Chaoyang;

Don Mattrick, executive director and co-CEO in charge of overseas operations;

Ren Yuxin, executive director and co-CEO in charge of domestic business;

Director and CFO Gabriel Hodin;

Director, Kevin Tsujihara;

Director, Guo Pengfei;

Director, Alex Jones;

Director, Wang Fang.

There are very obvious traces of Ziweixing. Except for Zhang Chaoyang and Wang Fang, they are all Zhou Buqi's men. They can be said to cover the sky with one hand.

Needless to say, Lao Zhang must be the candidate for vice chairman.

Wang Fang’s identity is also quite special. He is the founder and former CEO of Changyou, and it was he who built Changyou’s fortune. However, he has lost power and is ranked last on the board.

The current stage is just a transition period. After two or three years, Changyou's organizational structure will be relatively stable, and it will be time for him to withdraw from the board of directors. If he is still willing to work at Changyou, he can be the chairman of the supervisory board.

Another important adjustment is that Gabriel Hodin replaced Meng Boyan and became the new financial director.

The previous chief financial officer of Changyou was Meng Boyan, who is naturally also a director of Changyou.

This time he was replaced by a foreigner named Gabriel Hodin.

However, Meng Boyan did not leave his job. He is still the chief financial officer of Changyou, but he is in charge of domestic business. Gabriel Hodding is in charge of overseas finance.

Gabriel Houlding has previously worked at EA and Blizzard, and served as the vice president of finance at Blizzard, just one step away from the chief financial officer.

After Don Mattrick joined Ziweixing International, he invited his former EA colleague to join him.

After joining Ziweixing International, Gabriel Holding became the vice president of finance, in charge of the finance of the film and game entertainment business, which is equivalent to the second-in-command in Ziweixing International's financial system.

This time Changyou acquired the game division of Ziweixing International, so it was logical for him to join Changyou together with Don Mattrick.

There are three main reasons why he can replace Meng Boyan as director.

1. Strategic level.

The next most important thing for Changyou is global development. During the period when the mobile game market began, it even grew wildly at all costs.

In the development of globalization, it is obvious that Gabriel Hodin, a foreigner, is more familiar.

Second, the corporate brand level.

If Changyou wants to become a global gaming giant, it must first achieve globalization in its corporate structure, and the first to bear the brunt is the board of directors.

If the board of directors is all Chinese and there is not enough diversity, it will be easy for people to criticize and complain about it, which will affect Changyou's global brand.

3. Financial and regulatory aspects.

Changyou is listed on Nasdaq and will take root in the European and American markets in the future, which requires Changyou to gain the trust of the authorities.

If all the directors are Chinese, they will be regarded as “outsiders” to European and American authorities, which will easily arouse their fear. What if these outsiders get together and do some dirty work internally?

Therefore, the board of directors must be balanced and there must be many foreigners present. In the eyes of European and American authorities, these foreigners are "their own people". Having their own people inside Changyou will make them feel more at ease.

The capital market also has this logic. The more diverse the board of directors is, the less likely it is for the company to be monolithic, and the less likely it is for the management to work together to harm the interests of shareholders. The more stocks will be favored by the capital market.

Just like Gabriel, Alex, Mattrick, Kevin Tsujihara and other foreigners, can they be of the same mind as Zhou Buqi?

It's nothing more than a business relationship, just starting a company together to make money.

Once Zhou Buqi wants to cause some illegal and disorderly behavior internally, the Chinese and the Chinese are his direct descendants, so they may really bite the bullet and go with him to do some criminal activities.

Those foreigners are all working part-time, so it is difficult to mix them together, thereby infringing on the interests of users and shareholders.

These foreigners actually play a certain surveillance role.

If a Korean or Thai company has a very large business in overseas markets, but the board of directors is all Koreans, not a single foreigner... this is very taboo, and it will be considered that they have a guilty conscience and are playing dirty tricks internally. If you are willing to be subject to public supervision, you will be subject to strict scrutiny, constant targeting, and even sanctions from the authorities.

The truth is similar all over the world, and it’s the same in China.

For example, at the beginning, foreign companies had to join joint ventures and Chinese people had to participate, hoping to use their own people to keep an eye on foreign companies; and later, they had to send party committees to private companies to provide some training to entrepreneurs and use the spirit of instruction to guide them. Guide them to do business.

When Zhou Buqi does business, he never engages in messy, illegal or undisciplined activities. He is upright and aboveboard.

This is true at home and abroad.

He can already earn a few gold mountains by making money openly, but why should he engage in activities that are not on the table?

He is very calm and clean, so he has no guilty conscience and can openly accept the supervision of the whole society.

At the shareholders' meeting, Zhou Buqi was successfully elected as the new chairman of the board of directors of Changyou.

Then, as chairman, he nominated and invited Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Jieyu Media President Xu Baihui and Spotify CEO Daniel Ek to serve as independent directors of the company.

The new organizational structure surrounding Zhou Buqi is considered to have completed the top-level design.

…

There were actually not many people in the so-called shareholders' meeting. There were only 27 shareholder representatives present, and more than half of them were foreigners. Many shareholders didn't come at all, and the shareholders who came felt like they were aware of the situation.

Changyou's general meeting of shareholders was basically just a one-word speech, just a witness, a formality, and a few suggestions. It had no real decision-making power at all.

Ziweixing and Sohu already have a majority stake in Changyou, so they don’t need to adopt the AB share model.

However, everyone is full of expectations for the newly appointed young chairman.

At noon, Changyou paid for it and invited everyone to the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse for a state banquet. There are also some tourism projects in the afternoon, such as climbing the Great Wall and visiting the Forbidden City.

Zhou Buqi did not participate.

Many shareholders are shareholder representatives of investment institutions, and they use the institutions' money to spend public funds in China. Zhou Buqi is not in the mood to take them on a sightseeing tour.

Zhou Buqi first went to Jiang Shuying and Tang Yixin, relaxed for a while, and took a bath. He returned to Ziweixing's headquarters refreshed after two o'clock in the afternoon.

The office is ready.

Except for Guan Nanqing, who went on a business trip to the United States, the other eight secretaries who stayed behind were assigned the task of "product experience officers" to try out and experience some apps currently available on smartphones.

Zhou Buqi returned to the office and was a little surprised when he found that it was Gu Zanli who came over. "Where is Sun Wanran?"

Gu Zanli was elegant and elegant, and said crisply: "Assistant Sun is still on vacation."

Ning Lu behind her said softly: "She took her parents to travel to Chang'an to see the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, Terracotta Warriors and so on."

Zhou Buqi turned his head and said with a smile: "That's not your hometown."

Ning Lu pursed her lips and said, "Yes, she even asked me how to leave."

Zhou Buqi thought of something and asked curiously: "By the way, why haven't I heard you speak in dialect? I heard that the dialect in your area doesn't distinguish between pre-nasal and post-nasal."

"Boring!" Ning Lu rolled her eyes at him, and then told Gu Zanli, "Call everyone out, and let's discuss together what interesting apps there are."

After a while, Yingying Yanyan's little secretaries ran out happily.

Everyone holds a piece of material in their hands.

Zhou Buqi had just returned from Jiang Shuying and Tang Yixin. He was in an open mood and asked everyone to take the yoga mats and throw them on the ground. Just like before, Zhou Buqi sat in the middle, and the girls sat around him, surrounding him.

Everyone talks about their own understanding and discovery.

To be honest, the level of these girls is really not that good.

Maybe it was due to lack of work experience and failure to find the right direction. There was a herd effect and a lot of repetitive work was done. Fortunately, there is some value.

Some summarize the top 10 apps at the moment, some list the top 30 apps, and some carefully select the top 10 apps... In short, they are all the same, they just choose from the most popular apps at the moment.

In fact, most of the popular apps have been paid attention to at the company level.

Zhou Buqi did not dissipate their enthusiasm, but listened to their reports with a smile. In summary, they were basically 20 outstanding apps in China.

There are slight differences, but they are basically the same. Basically, they are available on QQ, WeChat, Fruit Ninja, Weibo, QQ Music, UC Browser, Friends, Talking Cat 2, Taobao, Weidian, Talking Cat, Big Choose from apps such as Fish Eat Little Fish, Battery Doctor, Weidian Mobile Guard, Weidian Music, Meitu Xiuxiu, QChat, Weidian Browser, Mobile Baidu, Toutiao, Weidian Mobile Assistant, and Xiaonei.com.

Zhou Buqi had just held a shareholders' meeting at Changyou in the morning, and his thoughts had not yet escaped from the game industry.

I am more interested in the mobile games in these popular apps.

"Fruit Ninja" was launched by an Australian game studio and is currently one of the most popular mobile games in the world. Changyou asked and they said they would not sell it.

"Big Fish Eat Little Fish" is very familiar. It was launched by Baokai Studio, a subsidiary of Ziweixing International's game division. It was originally a computer version of the game "Swallowing Fish" and became a mobile game released in China by Changyou. The market was renamed "Big Fish Eat Small Fish".

It is very popular in China. Among the top 10 free apps, there are big fish eating small fish.

But that's nothing compared to a talking cat.

Among the top 10, "Talking Cat 2" ranked 5th and "Talking Cat" ranked 8th. Both versions were actually on the list!