My 1999

At its peak, Vivendi Universal had a market value of 102.8 billion euros.

"After all, if Veolia Environment had been separated and this business had been retained, Vivendi's market value would not have fallen so much." Huo Yan said.

Xu Liang nodded slightly.

"There is another thing. Vivendi seems to regret selling the game business. It has been in contact with Ubisoft for a while and wants to acquire it, but Ubisoft's people don't seem to be very interested in Vivendi's mergers and acquisitions."

"It seems that they are very greedy for the revenue of "World of Warcraft." Xu Liang smiled.

"If it were me, I would have regretted it a long time ago when I saw the business I sold making more than a billion dollars a year. It's natural to want to make up for it.

However, Vivendi has a deep foundation in the pan-entertainment industry. If they can really learn from their lessons and do the game business seriously, the possibility of success is still very high."

"You also said that the premise is to learn from their lessons. I don't think these guys will learn from their lessons." Xu Liang said.

Why did Vivendi sell Blizzard?

Isn't it because there are problems with internal operations and they need money to fill debts?

And Vivendi's business itself has problems.

Canal+ Group is known as the largest pay cable TV station in Europe.

But it's 4204, how many people still watch TV?

The Internet is king.

The value of TV networks will continue to decline with the continuous development of Internet media.

Fortunately, in addition to TV networks, Canal+ Group, which has acquired EMI, is also the second largest film and television producer in Europe.

But Xu Liang values ​​its rich copyright library more.

In the long run, Canal+ Group's assets are not very high-quality.

Havas News Agency.

A world-renowned publishing, news and multimedia practitioner.

It owns 60 publishing houses and 80 newspapers and periodicals, with annual sales of 80 million books, 5 million newspapers and magazines, and 40 million multimedia CDs.

This is destined to be a rapidly depreciating negative asset.

The development of the Internet is the death knell of publishing groups.

Even the top media with great reputations such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal are almost unable to survive.

Media groups such as Havas News Agency are naturally not much better.

Vivendi Telecom.

Vivendi Telecom is divided into three businesses.

One is Cegtel, a private French telecommunications company; one is Vivendi International Telecom; and the last is Telecom Italia's 15.7% stake.

The first two are controlled by Vivendi, but they are not large in scale, with a total revenue of only $8.7 billion, which is incomparable to telecom giants such as France Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, and Vodafone, which have revenues of tens of billions or even hundreds of billions of dollars.

The last is Vivendi Network.

To put it bluntly, it is a portal website.

It looks good now, with a presence in nine countries including France and Germany, more than 80 million users, and its influence in Europe is second only to Yahoo.

However, even Yahoo, the leader of portal websites, has declined, and Vivendi Network will not be an exception.

In this comparison.

The two sectors that really have potential are Canal+ Group and Vivendi Telecom.

The former is not bad. Although the TV network is destined to decline, the film and television production and copyright business are always developing.

Although Vivendi Telecom has been developing, it has never become a top player in the industry.

So it is not difficult to understand why Vivendi fell so badly after it was revived by selling assets.

In addition to operational problems, the key is to choose the wrong direction.

Everyone will say that choice is more important than hard work.

But it is extremely difficult to do it.

"How much equity does Vivendi hold in Veolia Environment?"

"In 2002, it was 63%, and now it is only 40.41%." Huo Yan said.

"It seems that Veolia is not valued by Vivendi."

"The imagination space of environmental protection business is too small. With an annual revenue of more than 25.5 billion euros, the net profit is only 800 million euros, and the net return rate is only 3.2%.

It is a typical red ocean industry with large investment and small returns.

In contrast, pan-entertainment, especially Internet and telecommunications business, is developing rapidly and has huge imagination space.

With Vivendi's investment style, they are more willing to sell Veolia in exchange for funds to invest in telecommunications, Internet and pan-entertainment business."

Xu Liang nodded slightly. The environmental protection industry, especially water treatment and garbage disposal, belongs to public utilities, which is a low-profit industry.

It is not friendly to ambitious CEOs.

The reason is very simple.

In Europe and the United States, CEOs are workers who survive by the company's performance. If the performance is good, the bonus is high.

If the performance is poor, the bonus is small.

With the environmental protection industry, no matter how hard you try, the profit will not be high.

So Vivendi decisively transformed.

And it bought a lot.

Veolia's financial data soared.

The market value is high, investors are happy; the bonus is huge, and the management is also happy.

The company collapsed.

It has nothing to do with me, I am just an employee.

Dismiss?

Dismiss, anyway, I have made enough money over the years.

This is the mentality of most professional managers in Europe and the United States.

The most typical example is Lehman.

Lehman collapsed, but the management retired comfortably with a bonus of 385 million US dollars.

There is also the world's largest insurance company AIG. The United States spent US$170 billion to prevent it from bankruptcy, but after surviving the crisis, it turned around and paid a huge bonus of US$450 million to its senior officials.

Pay bonuses of up to $165 million to financial products executives who contributed to the bankruptcy crisis.

Ironic?

Executives at Merrill Lynch and Citigroup said it was normal.

The management of the former received US$4.5 billion, and the management of the latter received US$5.3 billion.

In comparison, Lehman and AIG are younger brothers.

The shameless operation directly drove the old and American rednecks crazy, and launched the Occupy Wall Street movement with great vigor.

But it didn't work.

Executives should take it or take it.

The management-centered system in European and American business circles is so awesome.

Of course, this also has something to do with the equity being too dispersed.

Xu Liang pondered briefly.

“If I come to acquire Veolia, do you think Vidywang’s management will let go?”

"meeting.

But they will definitely offer you a painfully high price, or ask you to use Hongmeng games as chips. " Huo Yan said.

"That's certainly the old man Foch's style."

“Mr. Xu, if you really plan to acquire Veolia, you can acquire it from the secondary market.

Vivendi has been selling off Veolia's shares in the past few years. As long as you wait long enough, a complete acquisition may be difficult, but it will be much easier if you become a major shareholder. "

Xu Liang nodded slightly.

Veolia Environnement's market value is now less than 8.4 billion euros.

It is not difficult to acquire it with Xu Liang's financial resources.

The only concern is French government censorship.

"Mr. Xu, Veolia's main business is public utilities, and the rate of return is very low."

Huo Yan reminded.

"I understand what you mean. The return on investment in public utilities is indeed low, but it is also very stable."

He has no shortage of investments with high returns. Apple, Amazon, and Google have very high returns on investment. What he lacks are industries with stable returns.

What is stable return?

The economic crisis has little impact on me, and there is basically no industrial cycle.

Except for force majeure such as wars and natural disasters, there is basically no delay in making money.

Sewage treatment, garbage disposal, heating, and transportation are such industries.

The cunning old Li from Xiangjiang likes this kind of industry the most.

"Mr. Xu, although the returns from public utilities are stable, from an industrial perspective.

You have already occupied a large proportion in the global pan-entertainment industry chain through enterprises such as Hongmeng Company, Universal Group, Penguin, Aihui Records, and Bandai Company.

You are familiar with this industry and have a solid industrial foundation.

It is in your best interest to continue to strengthen your presence in the pan-entertainment industry, realize resource exchanges, channel exchanges, and personnel exchanges, and increase your market share in the global entertainment industry, or even become a monopoly.

If you simply pursue stability, you can invest in government bonds.

Not only is the rate of return higher than that of Veolia, but it also does not require much energy to be invested in management. "

Xu Liang fell silent after a few words.

yes.

He has entered enough industries.

Internet (Hongmeng, Facebook, Penguin, Alibaba).

Chip Technology (Hynix).

Real estate (Taihua, Fuhua).

Finance (Hanhua, Standard Chartered).

Automotive Industry (Torch).

Travel (Global Travel Group)

Beverages and Food (Tingyi, Huaxia Liquor Group)

Retail (Kelong Supermarket, Taihua Department Store, Taihua Clothing)

Pan-entertainment (Universal Pictures, Universal Music Group, Penguin Entertainment Group, K. Wah Group, Bandai, Aihui Records, DreamWorks Animation, Marvel, etc.)

Consumer Electronics (Kunlun Technology)

Minerals (Fortescue Metals Group)

Agriculture (Denong, Harvest, Three-dimensional Fertilizer)

Education and training (new dream)

These are just core and sub-core industries. If you include the NBA Warriors, NVC Lighting, etc., there will be more.

What he has to do now is not to continue to expand his industrial clusters, but to continue to consolidate and develop existing enterprises on the basis of the existing ones.

Otherwise, if we continue to expand, once there is no financial support, no guidance from past life memories, and fierce competition, Delong's end will probably be his.

Thinking of this, Xu Liang let out a long sigh.

He patted Huo Yan on the shoulder.

He said with emotion.

"Listening to your words is worth ten years of reading.

Lao Huo, you are right.

Investing in Vivendi and continuing to strengthen Hongyan’s market share in the global entertainment industry is the most beneficial choice! "

Compared to opening a new map, it saves more effort to continue working on the familiar one-third of an acre of land.

"As long as you don't mind my talking too much."

Huo Yan also felt relieved.

Not everyone is receptive to good advice.

Especially when Xu Liang became famous as a young man, his great achievements brought him strong self-confidence. The more he did this, the easier it would be to become stubborn.

But what he didn't know was that Xu Liang looked green on the outside, but was really a reborn old man on the inside.

I know very well how many pounds I have.

Although the career is vast, it has not yet reached its peak.

"Haha, I don't dislike it, I don't dislike it. Give me more suggestions like this in the future. ...By the way, if I acquire Vivendi, what suggestions do you have?" Xu Liang asked.