Chapter 824
SOMY’s idea is very simple. You can come to buy products, but it is impossible for you to cooperate with me in research and development.
What level are you in Xiaguo? Why do you want to do R&D with me? Just buy my products honestly.
Whether it is the two neighboring countries or Europe and the United States, their attitudes towards Xia Country’s technology are actually basically the same.
What's more, there are very complicated historical reasons between the two sides.
Under such circumstances, Lu Yiming still wanted SOMY's technology, which could only be said to be overthinking.
However, it was obvious that Zhongba Ryoji underestimated Lu Yiming's determination.
Lu Yiming came here to discuss cooperation because he was attracted by SOMY's technology. Now that SOMY is not planning to cooperate, Lu Yiming feels that there is nothing to talk about.
SOMY is indeed a company with strong technical capabilities, especially in the field of imaging, where it has its own unique understanding and accomplishments. However, this does not mean that SOMY's products are the only ones on the market.
Since SOMY didn't want to cooperate, Lu Yiming didn't want to give in to her and just got up and left.
"If you say so, then we have nothing more to talk about. Goodbye."
Seeing that Lu Yiming was about to leave, Zhongba Liangzhi said quickly: "Mr. Lu, let's talk about purchasing. SOMY attaches great importance to the market and partners of Xia Country. We will definitely provide you with products at the most favorable price."
Lu Yiming didn't even pause, let alone look back: "No need, leave your discount to others, I don't need that little money."
After leaving, Yu Jiayi asked, "Boss Lu, Zhongbo's president refuses to give us the technology license. What should we do next? This old man is really something. It's not like we can't afford it. Why doesn't he want to sell it? Isn't it said that as long as there is profit, capitalists can do anything?"
Lu Yiming obviously did his homework before coming here. He said, "Nakaba Ryoji has been working for SOMY since 1977, which is almost 30 years ago. It can be said that he has worked for SOMY for half his life. So he must have feelings for SOMY. What's the difference between trying to persuade him to sell SOMY's technology and asking a father to buy his child? So, it's understandable that he made such a decision."
Yu Jiayi was surprised and a little confused: "In this case, won't it be more difficult for us to obtain SOMY's technical license?"
However, Lu Yiming changed the subject and said, "Chubo Ryoji has deep feelings for SOMY, but some people are financial elites without feelings. Do you know that the latest CEO of SOMY is actually a beautiful English-American? And she climbed up from a branch company, and the financial vampires on Wall Street are behind her. How can such a person have feelings for SOMY?"
"You mean we can go directly to the CEO of this newest SOMY businessman?"
Yu Jiayi was shocked, but even more confused: "Why would SOMY let someone like this be the CEO of the group?"
Lu Yiming said with emotion: "How can economic globalization only have advantages and no disadvantages? SOMY is booming in the United States, and the status and power of the branch are getting bigger and bigger. In addition, there are financial consortiums in the United States behind it. Is it surprising that it will backfire on SOMY headquarters?"
Yu Jiayi suddenly realized: "No wonder."
Lu Yiming continued, "Unless SOMY is willing to give up its interests in the United States, the problem of being too big to be removed will never be solved. In fact, SOMY will never give up its huge interests in the United States. With such a negative example, if we really want to go abroad in the future, we must always be vigilant against financial capital forces such as Wall Street. Under their gentle masks, they are greedy and bloodthirsty by nature, and they will really eat people."
Early in the morning of this day, Howard Stringer came to his office at SOMY.
He is 1.95 meters tall, wearing gold-rimmed glasses and a black suit. He is sturdy but elegant, and his temperament is difficult to describe.
With a smile on his face, he wiped the leather seat under his butt carefully.
After working hard for so many years, Howard Stringer finally became the CEO of SOMY Group. He felt that his life had reached its peak.
He is of English descent and became a U.S. citizen in 1985. He worked at CBS News for 30 years, working his way up from reporter and producer to president. He has won nine Emmy Awards, and the CBS Evening News, which he co-hosted with Dan Rather, was once the highest-rated news program in the United States.
In May 1997, he joined the US branch of SOMY with great honors and served as president, mainly in charge of entertainment-related industries such as movies and music.
At the end of 2004, Howard Stringer once again used his extensive network of contacts to lead the merger into MGM Studios, and merged SOMY Music and Boardman into SOMY Boardman Music Entertainment.
It was precisely because of this contribution and his noble ancestry that Howard Stringer was finally voted through by the SOMY shareholders' meeting and became the first foreign leader in SOMY's history.
At this moment, Howard Stringer was undoubtedly proud and confident.
After wiping the chair, he turned on his computer and asked his beautiful secretary to bring him a cup of warm freshly ground coffee, ready to start his day's work.
He had just finished his coffee when a tall secretary wearing a black hip skirt suit and flesh-colored stockings, wearing black leather high heels, walked in with her hips twisted and said to him, "Sir, Mr. Lu Yiming, the richest man in Asia from Xia Country, just called you and wants to meet you at Ginza at noon."
Ginza should be the most prosperous place in Kyoto. Many business and political leaders like to visit there. Lu Yiming has been to the island country quite often, so he naturally followed the crowd and decided to meet in Ginza.
As a business elite in the United States, Howard Stringer was very familiar with Lu Yiming. When he heard that Lu Yiming wanted to see him, he said without hesitation: "Tell him that I will be there on time at noon."
"Yes, sir."
At noon, Howard Stringer met Lu Yiming in a high-end izakaya in Ginza.
Lu Yiming took the initiative to greet him and said, "Nice to meet you, Mr. Howard Stringer."
Howard Stringer was also very polite to the super-rich Lu Yiming, saying: "It is my honor to meet Mr. Lu. Just call me Howard."
"Howard is such a gentleman, come, please take a seat."
After both parties sat down, Howard Stringer asked curiously, "I wonder why Mr. Lu asked me to come here?"
Lu Yiming did not keep the topic secret and said straight to the point: "I want to cooperate with SOMY. I have approached President Zhongbo before, but was rejected. So I can only come to you, Howard."
Howard Stringer was able to climb to the position of CEO, so he is certainly no easy task.
He quickly realized that since Zhongba Ryoji refused to cooperate with Lu Yiming, there must be some hidden story behind it.
Although he became a CEO, a CEO is just a chief executive officer. To put it bluntly, he is the highest-ranking person among the people doing the work.
Commonly known as the top tool man.
The real decision-makers in the company are still the bosses.
So, he hesitated for a moment, then said, "Mr. Lu, if the president has rejected you, then I have no choice."
Of course Lu Yiming knew that what he said was just bullshit to shift the blame. SOMY, how could it dare to go against Wall Street?
He immediately said, "Don't be in a hurry to reject me, Howard, how about listening to my conditions first?"
"Okay, go ahead."
Decided to give Lu Yiming some face. There's no harm in listening anyway.
Lu Yiming smiled and said, "You have just become the CEO of SOMY. Now is the time to prove yourself with achievements. This is the basis of our cooperation. Compared with an old stubborn person like Nakabachi Ryoji, maybe we can get along better. After all, SOMY is too old. If it cannot embrace the new era, it will be ruthlessly eliminated."
Howard Stringer's expression became more serious, and it was obvious that Lu Yiming's words touched him a little.
As the first foreign leader in SOMY's history, this is both an honor and a pressure for him.
In order to secure this position, he must produce impressive data, otherwise the shareholders will never tolerate his existence.
The primary task facing Howard Stringer now is to fully coordinate the independent departments under SOMY, reform SOMY's rigid traditional management system, and especially improve the unprofitable electronics department.
Although what Lu Yiming said was unpleasant to hear, it hit the nail on the head.
According to the 2004 financial report of the electronics department, SOMY produced and launched about 100 new products in China, with a total output value of nearly US$4 billion. A large number of local components and local talents were used, contributing to the development of Xiaguo's electronics industry.
Of course, SOMY also reaped huge rewards. For example, sales of electronic products in China reached nearly US$3 billion, a 60% increase over the previous year, showing a good development momentum.
In 2005, SOMY launched the latest high-tech digital products including the cost-effective portable digital hard disk music player NW-HD5, Cyber-shot digital camera and Handycam digital video recorder.
In addition, SOMY also released the K750i with Ericsson, making this controversial mobile phone a huge success and reaching a new height in market share.
Its powerful camera performance, built-in FM radio and excellent music player have won the favor of more and more users.
If this development trend continues, SOMY has a real chance of regaining vitality.
However, these projects were promoted by SOMY's "conservatives" such as Ryoji Nakabachi. They believed in the idea that technology is supreme and that SOMY's glory was created by its strong technical strength. Therefore, if SOMY wants to regain its former dominance in consumer electronics, it must increase investment in scientific research.
This was unacceptable to Howard Stringer.
Since he is in charge of the entertainment sector, what does the success of the technical department have to do with him?
On the contrary, because a large amount of resources were squeezed, the development of the entertainment department he led was hindered. Howard Stringer had long been dissatisfied with this situation and wanted to directly lay off the entire R&D department.
After all, how much does it cost to engage in scientific research?
The risk is damn high!
If you take the wrong technical route, you will lose all your money. This is how many island companies have declined in recent years, and SOMY has suffered a great loss as a result.
In Howard Stringer's opinion, SOMY's old stubborn people like Ryoji Nakabachi are simply good-for-nothings. If SOMY wants to restore its former glory, it should now focus on entertainment and finance.
Wouldn't it be better to make a few movies, pump up the box office, hype it up a bit, and then go to the stock market to reap the profits?
Easy and profitable!
After the technical research and development departments are laid off, scientific research expenditures will drop significantly, and the financial report data will look very good. By then, if we just disclose a few good news, won't the stock price go up?
Isn’t this better than working hard on research and development?
Howard Stringer has a group of financial capital forces on Wall Street standing behind him. They have long been good at playing with stocks, so they look down on old-school SOMY people like Nakabachi Ryoji, and think that it is because of their existence that SOMY's rise is being hindered.
All kinds of thoughts went through Howard Stringer's mind. He became interested in what Lu Yiming said and asked, "So, how do you want to cooperate with SOMY?"
Lu Yiming got straight to the point and said, "I hope to acquire some of SOMY's technology patents and related industries."
Howard Stringer's eyes lit up when he heard this. He was worrying about how to cut off these "money-eating beasts that don't make much money but burn money", and he and Lu Yiming hit it off immediately.
However, as a greedy capitalist, in order to gain the greatest benefits, he still said coldly: "Mr. Lu, you know that technology is the foundation of SOMY and it is not for sale."
In the end, it's nothing more than asking Lu Yiming to pay more money.
Lu Yiming never cares about problems that can be solved with money.
He breathed a sigh of relief, secretly feeling that it was indeed the most comfortable thing to chat with someone who only cared about money.
Although he was very happy, Lu Yiming still looked embarrassed and said, "Howard, you know, many of SOMY's technologies are outdated. For example, HDR-FX1E, although it is a high-definition digital camera that meets the HDV1080i standard, its sales volume is not as high as expected. Compared with the huge research and development expenses, it is not worth mentioning at all. We bought it just to reserve technology. If the price is too high, we can only give up."
What Lu Yiming said was completely true. It was because of the backward technology that the company lagged behind in the market competition and was a money-losing asset among the company's assets.
However, what Lu Yiming said about building up technical reserves seemed like bullshit to Howard Stringer.
Even if it is backward technology, it is advanced enough for the current Xia Kingdom.
Howard Stringer is a man who sells his father's land without any regret. Anyway, SOMY's "grandfather" is not his biological grandfather. As long as he can make the financial report data look good during his term, he doesn't care what will happen in the future.
Of course, it is impossible to sell it at a low price, SOMY's technology is still very valuable.
"Mr. Lu, I see that you are sincere about it. I have also heard about your deeds on Wall Street. Why don't I make an offer? I will just treat it as making friends with you. One price, 8 billion US dollars, how about it?"
"Eight billion? And US dollars? Why don't you just go and rob them? Not to mention US dollars, even Japanese yen seems expensive to me!"
As soon as Lu Yiming heard this, he knew that this guy was asking for too much. After all, before setting off, he had already asked someone to evaluate the value of those technologies.
Howard Stringer saw that Lu Yiming seemed very angry, but he was not upset at all. Instead, he smiled happily: "Mr. Lu, there is nothing we can do. This is the market situation."
Seeing Howard Stringer's attitude, Lu Yiming couldn't help but curse him as an old fox in his heart.
As expected of someone from Wall Street, he is not easy to deal with.
Lu Yiming felt that if they just argued over the price, they would probably not be able to reach any conclusion until dark today, so he changed the subject and said with a smile: "Well, this is really beyond my expectations. I think we can talk about something else now. For example, movies? SOMY's movies are very good. If possible, we can also cooperate in this area."
"I have a company in the United States called Su Qiao Films. I think you must have heard of it. We are currently shooting a series of superhero themed movies. We want to create an IP industry chain through superhero movies. If we succeed, we can easily make tens of billions of dollars."
Howard Stringer's face changed. He was very interested in what Lu Yiming said!
If SOMY Pictures can make money, he can definitely use his overwhelming advantage to deal with those old guard in the board of directors and carry out drastic reforms on SOMY.
Seeing that the fish had taken the bait, Lu Yiming smiled and said, "This plan is still confidential, but we have acquired the copyrights of almost all Marvel characters, except Spider-Man, who was taken away by SOMY."
Howard Stringer immediately said: "We can definitely cooperate. You should understand the commercial value of Spider-Man."
Lu Yiming shook his head: "I have the entire Marvel, so many superheroes, and SOMY can only come up with one Spider-Man. I am at a disadvantage in this kind of cooperation. How about this, if you help me acquire the hardware department of SOMY, I will facilitate your cooperation with Su Qiao Pictures. This condition is very fair. What do you think?"
After going around in circles, we finally got back to this topic.
But now with the movie as a bargaining chip, the conditions between the two parties have immediately reached a whole new level.
Howard Stringer hesitated for a moment and said, "Okay, but SOMY's mobile phone business will not be sold."
What kind of garbage is the SOMY phone?
Lu Yiming was not interested in this "hybrid" mobile phone developed by SOMY and Ericsson. When smartphones came out, even Nokia was swept away. What kind of rotten fish is SOMY?
However, Lu Yiming pretended to be regretful and said, "Okay, Howard, for the sake of our friendship, I am willing to accept this condition."
In fact, there is no friendship between the two.
But no matter what, without Howard Stringer, the "traitor" of SOMY, it would be impossible for Lu Yiming to buy SOMY's core technology assets.
He is still willing to make friends with this person.
