America's Road to Fame

Chapter 58 Investment Progress
"What do you plan to do? Uncle, are you still planning to save Pete?"

"No one can save him, William, except himself."

Speaking of this matter, John Drey's heart was a little heavy. He stood up, walked to the French windows, looked at the courtyard outside William Chen's villa, and said, "You seem to be more concerned about this matter?"

"You know, Uncle John, the lawyer in charge of my legal and tax affairs, Ms. Alicia, she is the wife of that Mr. Pete." William Chen shook his head and said, "What I care about is that this matter will What kind of influence do I have."

"In this case, that lady may be hit hard. After all, Pete's incident this time is too disreputable. Those damn photos have been spread everywhere."

"But you can rest assured, William, it will not have any impact on your side. The lady's heart may be hit a lot, but this matter will not involve her personally, but will be caused by Pete's She will receive widespread sympathy, and as long as she is a little smarter, she may even benefit from it."

John Drey looked at his nephew, thought for a moment, and said, "As for whether you should continue to entrust these matters to her, you can think about it yourself. What I need to remind you is that although fundamentally speaking, he is involved The things you have learned will not have any practical things for your company, but one thing, if they really want to make things bigger, it is hard to say that they will not use your background to make a fuss."

Chen William understood what John Drey meant. The Peter scandal caused a lot of uproar. It was hard to say that there was no support from the party behind it, and it was even possible that they planned to expose this incident.

Then the direction of this matter depends on how much exact evidence of Pete the other party has, and the extent to which their purpose is to achieve.

Chen William will definitely not participate in these matters, but he also needs to evaluate whether he will be involved in this matter, or to what extent he will be affected.

The photos exposed now can only prove the fact that Pete is suspected of recruiting prostitutes. If there is no other more definite evidence, then this matter will only end here.

Although it is illegal to recruit prostitutes in the United States, according to previous practice, the federal prosecutors can file charges against prostitution parties, but generally do not charge "clients" like Pete.So if the evidence is limited to that, Pete may resign as governor, but never go to jail, and may even run again in the near future.

If this is the case, it will definitely not satisfy Xiangdang. Then following Alicia, it is not impossible to drag Chen William, who has cooperated with her and has a strong background in the Donkey Party family, into the water.

After all, profit transfer is also a part of corruption. Even if they can't find any evidence at all, just hyping up this matter can ruin Pete's image in the eyes of the public.

Therefore, John Drey mentioned that the things he needs to consider are mainly these aspects.

John Dray didn't stay with William Chen for too long, and after chatting with William Chen about his recent situation and William Chen's own investment situation, he set off to leave.

According to him, he still needs to contact some donkey party members to make arrangements for Pete's affairs.

"I have time to meet your grandfather, William, he also cares about you very much." John Drey said to William Chen when he left.

Seeing the back of his uncle leaving, William Chen knew that he was under a lot of pressure at this time. Pete's revelation of this bad news was very detrimental to the situation of the Donkey Party in this important constituency in New York State. Therefore, John Dray this time Come over and figure out a way to clean up this mess.

After waking up this morning, William Chen sat on the plane for more than twelve hours.He spent most of his time on the plane reading, and now he had talked with his uncle for so long when he came back. After John Drey left, he really felt a little bit tired.

So William Chen took a short break, took a bath for a while, and drove to Meta Investment Company in Building 666.

Seeing Building No. 666, William Chen couldn't help thinking that during his time away from New York, if the most embarrassing person was Governor Pete, then the most beautiful person was probably Garrett from the Kushnar Group.

With the holding of No. 666 building and the building renovation plan with a total of 30 billion US dollars, Garrett and the Kushnar Group behind him have been in the limelight in New York for a while, occupying the front page news of many media.

Garrett was also at a time when the spring breeze was in full swing, and William Chen also saw reports that he went to Trump's headquarters building to find Ivanta with bouquets of flowers, the so-called "high-profile show of love".

Regarding this matter, Ivanta also explained to William Chen on the phone, saying that it was Garrett's own idea, and she rejected the other party's date invitation at that time.

However, this incident also reminded William Chen that Garrett still had a heart for Ivanta, and apart from him, it was unknown how many people were also thinking about her.Therefore, although his current relationship with Ivanta is progressing well, he still cannot take it lightly, and the relationship between the two needs to be determined early.

After entering the office, Chen William first approached Nelson and asked about the negotiation with Netflix and other companies during this period.

Knowing that William Chen will be back today, Nelson has already prepared relevant materials. For these, William Chen is not in a hurry to read them. He has also read a lot of briefings from Nelson during this period, so he directly asked: "Simply say Now let’s see which companies are interested.”

"The most in-depth talk at present is Netflix. Netflix began to develop into the streaming media field in 2007. After two years of technology accumulation, their streaming media technology is now basically mature, but limited by the bandwidth, the effect has not yet allowed them. Satisfied, there is no way around this, it can only be solved with the expansion of broadband.”

"Recently, they proposed a plan to strengthen content production, so additional investment is required. That's why they are still very interested in the equity investment we proposed. The current market value of Netflix is ​​about 23 billion US dollars , Now that the negotiation is progressing, the other party proposed to allow us to invest 2 million US dollars to obtain additional shares, so that we can obtain 541.5 million Netflix shares, accounting for 8% of the total share capital after investment.”

William Chen can accept this price. Of course, the premise is that Netflix can still have the scale of development in his previous life. After all, William Chen knows that after his previous life, Netflix’s market value exceeded 2000 billion U.S. dollars. Compared with it, now The market value of 23 billion U.S. dollars is simply the price of cabbage.

But now it seems that Netflix's development path is still very correct, and it is the success of content production that allows Netflix to develop in the future, and even become the only seventh largest after Hollywood's top six.

Seeing the slight hesitation on Nelson's expression, William Chen asked, "This condition is acceptable. Are there any other obstacles?"

"Yes, the main problem now is CEO Reed Hastings. In private contact, I feel that he still has doubts about our shareholding and holding such a high proportion of shares."

Seeing William Chen's puzzled expression, Nelson explained: "Reed Hastings is one of the co-founders of Netflix, who first held 70% of the original shares, but after many rounds of financing and IPO , and after successive reductions in his holdings, he currently only holds more than 300 million shares, accounting for about 5% of the shares.”

"Is it so little?" William Chen just found out about this. In his previous life, he thought that companies such as Penguin and Ali in his previous life, after listing, the founders only held about 10% or even less of the shares, which was already very low. , Unexpectedly, the market value of Netflix is ​​only 23 billion US dollars, and Reed Hastings, the founder and CEO, already has only 5% of the shares.

"Yes." Nelson continued: "And the most important thing is that Netflix is ​​not like those Internet companies in Silicon Valley. The stock is divided into AB shares, and the management's shares have higher voting rights; Netflix's shares are all Common stock, so the shares held by Reed Hastings are very dangerous, he will definitely worry about the situation that the management of the company will be left behind, so he will be very careful in choosing investors."

"So what he is most worried about now is that after the introduction of our investment, the shares he can control will be diluted, and there is a danger of being robbed of the company's control by us?" William Chen said after taking Nelson's words.

"Yes, boss. The main reason why our negotiations have stalled now is that he played a role in it." Nelson replied.

To be honest, he couldn't be sure of his boss's true thoughts in his heart. After all, those companies before, including the "New York Observer" and Twitter, were either wholly-owned by William Chen, or they held a vast majority of the shares and had absolute control. right.Therefore, on Netflix's side, the idea of ​​kicking Reed Hastings away directly and taking control of the company by himself is not ruled out.

Seeing Nelson's expression, William Chen understood that he also misunderstood his own thoughts.For Netflix's investment, he does not necessarily seek control, but hopes to have a certain influence on it while enjoying the company's growth dividends. Therefore, for William Chen, Reed Hastings Si's worries are very easy to dispel.

"I'm very satisfied with the terms you negotiated. As for Mr. Hastings' concerns, he can be assured. How about this? Make an appointment and I'll meet with him in person."

Hearing what William Chen said, Nelson was overjoyed. If this was the case, then as long as Reed Hastings let go, there would be no resistance to the investment, so he quickly said that he would arrange a meeting with them immediately.

"What about other companies?"

"Other companies, currently Tesla and Marvel are in talks, are very hopeful to be able to invest, but Facebook CEO Zuckerberg directly rejected our proposal."

"Oh? Why?" Zuckerberg directly rejected himself, and Chen William became a little interested in it.

(End of this chapter)