Rebirth of the Great Entertainment Empire

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When it comes to Polygram records, I am afraid that anyone in the world who has dealt with music will be familiar with it.

This record company headquartered in London, England is a well-known record giant in the world today - it is much bigger than Xu Cun's Dreamworks Records Group, and it is not an exaggeration to say that it is the biggest brother in the record industry today .

Polygram's predecessor, Deutsche Grammophon, was established at the end of the last century and became a subsidiary of the German industrial giant Siemens after World War II.

In the early 1970s, in order to resist risks, Philips took the initiative to find Siemens, and finally the two European industrial giants reached an agreement - Deutsche Grammophon merged with PPI under the name of Philips, and then changed its name to 'PolyGram International Co., Ltd.' , the headquarters moved to London, England, Siemens and Philips each own half of its shares.

Backed by two major industrial giants in Europe, PolyGram has successively annexed the well-known jazz record company Shen Yun, Decca, Motown, DefJam, Le Devin and many other record companies owned by MGM.

Three years ago, because of Bertelsmann's pressure, Siemens finally chose Bertelsmann and sold most of its Polygram shares to Philips, making Polygram the holding company of Philips.

Now is the peak period of Polygram, even Sony Columbia Records, which is now the largest in the United States, and the old giant Universal Music, which has just been acquired by Sony, are mostly defeated when they compete for top singers and orchestras. This shows that Polygram How strong Jin is now.

The reason for mentioning Polygram.

It’s not that Xu Cun wants to buy Polygram—Although Xu Cun is rich, he won’t spend billions of dollars to acquire this record company that overlaps with DreamWorks Records Group, unless Polygram is willing to divest the European and American markets come out.

What Xu Cun wanted to acquire was Polygram’s UCT, which owns nearly a quarter of the theaters in the UK. After the August 7th stock market crash, the global record market began to decline. There has been a decline. In stark contrast, the annual profits contributed by the film industry are gradually increasing, and blockbuster films from the United States and Xiangjiang are plundering across Europe, and billions of dollars of huge profits can be plundered from Europe every year. During this period, many European countries, including Britain, France and Germany, began to encourage and support their own films. Polygram also established Polygram International Film Company at this time, and took advantage of the opportunity to create UCT theaters. It also plans to invest a huge sum of 420 million pounds in five years to make movies and enter the movie market on a large scale.

Polygram's cross-bank business strategy was regarded by many people as the biggest failure in Polygram's history in the previous life. First, invest less money to shoot a few low-cost films and gradually accumulate experience. Relying on PolyGram’s strong strength and influence, it might be impossible to take up the banner of supporting local European films, or simply acquire a relatively mature American film. If the company enters this industry, it will not create a tragic legend of losing more than 200 million US dollars a year.

actually--

To be fair, there is nothing wrong with the strategy formulated by PolyGram, but it just overestimated the competitiveness of European films. Purely a commercial blockbuster to please the audience, how can European films compete with blockbusters from Hollywood and Xiangjiang?

Therefore, it is inevitable for Polygram to lose again and again.

Ordinarily, in this case, the most sensible thing for PolyGram is to sell UCT theaters, including PolyGram International Films. Anyway, Xu Cun thinks so—this is part of the reason why Xu Cun approached Polygram in the first place.

What Xu Cun didn't expect was that the high-level executives of PolyGram hadn't conceded defeat—not only did they reject Xu Cun's acquisition of UCT Cinemas without even thinking about it, but they even spent tens of millions of dollars in cooperation with the United States and France. , Spanish film companies co-produced the historical biographical film The Biography of Columbus.

In the last life, this Columbus had a total investment of more than 40 million U.S. dollars, but in the end it only made a box office of more than 7 million U.S. dollars. It can be said that Polygram International Films, the main investor, lost money to grandma's family.

Xu Cun's acquisition team contacted PolyGram's senior management several times about the acquisition of UCT theaters, but they were all rejected by the PolyGram senior management without any room for mercy, and Columbus Biography has also been proposed by them. schedule.

Good words are hard to persuade, damn it, if Tianzun doesn’t save himself, he will die—the European Union will be established next year, and Xu Cun has no time to wait for PolyGram’s executives to toss PolyGram International Films to abolish it before buying UCT Cinemas.

But then again, in fact, among the three major theater chains in the UK, only UCT theater chain is the most suitable for Xu Cun's acquisition.

Let's talk about Vue first.

The owner of Vue is the notorious Baron Hudlin. This old thing is the most famous white supremacist and colonialist in the UK. Back then, he arrogantly bought out the front page of a large newspaper in London and warned the Iron Lady to dare to publish in China-UK. She was given a gun for signing the Joint Declaration, and it is said that she was criminally detained for threatening the Prime Minister's safety.

Xu Cun reckoned that this old man would have shot himself to death when he saw himself, the man who had disgraced the British Empire. How could he sell Vue to himself?

What's more, Pearson Group, the largest educational publishing company in Europe, is also in contact with Vue - choose one of the two, even if it is half the price, that old thing will definitely sell Vue to Pearson Group.

Let's talk about Odeon, which has been cooperating with DreamWorks in recent years.

Although it has a larger share of the UK cinema market than UCT, Odeon has been in good financial condition in recent years. The board of directors has no intention of selling it. It is conservatively estimated that it will cost nearly 600 million pounds to acquire it forcibly. Seven billion Hong Kong dollars is really not worth it.

The most troublesome thing is that Xu Cun is already notorious in the UK for forcibly buying Standard Chartered Bank. If he forcibly buys Odeon again, then he will never want to ease relations with the UK.

Xu Cun is bound to bleed heavily if he wants to win Odeon without forcing the purchase of Odeon. If Odeon is a little darker, Xu Cun may not have to pay one billion pounds or more than 11 billion Hong Kong dollars for it, which is even more uneconomical. .

However--

If Xu Cun had no theaters in the UK, Xu Cun would not only have to accept the exploitation of Odeon, but also be blocked by Odeon in the release channel-every time DreamWorks releases a new film, he has to take the initiative to come up with conditions that satisfy Odeon, otherwise Odeon will not give it to him. Opportunities for DreamWorks films to be released in Europe.

Xu Cun has had enough of this anger!

In addition, now is a critical period for Xu Cun to enter the European film market.

So, after silently reciting rich and self-willed twice, Xu Cun sent his acquisition team to London...

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