Chapter 313: Taking Over Summit Entertainment
On October 25, Liu Zhou and his entourage returned to New York from Washington.

In the morning, Liu Zhou attended the inquiry of relevant departments of the United States, had a simple lunch, and flew back to New York.

Liu Zhou really didn't want to stay in the city of Washington. There, he felt even breathing was very oppressive.

Although I was not harassed during the questioning in the morning, I was still looked at with a scrutinizing gaze, and some of the questions were very suggestive.

This made Liu Zhou feel very uncomfortable, and he wanted to slam the table and leave.

Damn, I came to the United States to acquire a small company. I paid real money, but it seems like I just snatched it away.

If he had not received training from Goldman Sachs before and knew that these foreigners were generally so mean, he really would not want to suffer such humiliation.

Fortunately, the inquiry time was not very long, only about half an hour.

On the way back, Ben Simmons, the Goldman Sachs representative in charge of Liu Zhou's acquisition business, said with a smile:

"Liu, you responded very well. Since the officials who asked questions did not make things too difficult, there should be no problem."

"Ben, I just want to know when the relevant departments of the United States will officially approve my acquisition of Summit Entertainment. It has been more than three months since the acquisition agreement was submitted. I am really fed up with it."

"Don't worry, we at Goldman Sachs will urge them to handle it as soon as possible. There should be a result in a week at most."

“Hopefully it’s a good outcome.”

"Of course, we at Goldman Sachs never let our clients down."

Liu Zhou was too lazy to listen to his bragging. After returning to New York, he asked Zhang Zhao and Anthony Edwards to follow up on the matter, and then went to find Anne Hathaway.

It just so happened that Anne Hathaway had just finished filming a movie and was resting at home.

Anne Hathaway was quite surprised by Liu Zhou's arrival.

In the past, Liu Zhou would only come to the United States once every six months, but this time he came again after just over three months.

Later, Annie learned that Liu Zhou's acquisition of Summit Entertainment had reached the final stage.

Seeing this, Anne Hathaway stayed with Liu Zhou, waiting for the final result.

That day, the two were returning from watching a play on Broadway when Liu Zhou received a call from Ben Simmons.

"Liu, congratulations, Summit Entertainment now belongs to you. This morning, Washington officially approved your acquisition of Summit Entertainment."

When Liu Zhou answered the phone on Monday, his somewhat excited voice came through the receiver.

However, Liu Zhou was also very happy to hear the good news he brought, and a smile appeared on his face.

Today is October 30th, five days after returning from Washington.

"Okay, is there anything else you need me to do?"

"No need. We at Goldman Sachs will take care of the rest for you. You can now officially take over Summit Entertainment."

"Ok, the commission will be deposited into Goldman Sachs' account within three days. Thank you for your help, Mr. Simmons."

"Liu, you're welcome. It's a pleasure working with you." Ben Simmons replied with a smile.

This was not just a polite remark. Not only was the pay for Liu Zhou's business this time high, but Liu Zhou also did not have a lot to do. Apart from letting Anthony Edwards participate, he left most of the matters to them.

This means that Ben Simmons doesn't have to worry about being constrained when working, and he doesn't have to spend time dealing with Party A.

Of course, what made Ben Simmons happiest was the generous compensation given by Liu Zhou, which was several million dollars.

However, when he thought about another business of Liu Zhou that his colleague in the company was in charge of, and that Liu Zhou gave their team a bonus of 10 million, he suddenly felt a little sour.

But this makes Ben Simmons want to establish a good relationship with Liu Zhou even more. After all, there are not many partners as generous as him.

On the other side, Liu Zhou naturally didn't know what Ben Simmons was thinking. After hanging up the phone, he couldn't suppress the smile.

Anne Hathaway saw Liu Zhou like this and asked with a smile:

"Has the acquisition of Summit Entertainment been approved?"

"Yes, I passed. Now Summit Entertainment is mine."

"Liu, congratulations!"

"Thank you. Do you want to go with me to Summit Entertainment? Their headquarters is in New York."

"Forget it, I won't go. You will definitely have a lot of things to do if you take over the company."

"Okay then, wait for me at home."

"You go now. You haven't informed Summit Entertainment that you're going to take over the company, right?"

"I know. Don't worry. Ever since the employees of Summit Entertainment learned that their boss was planning to sell the company, they have been preparing for a new boss to take over the company."

After parting with Anne Hathaway, Liu Zhou reunited with Anthony Edwards, Zhang Zhao and others and arrived at the Summit Entertainment headquarters together.

Some senior executives of Summit Entertainment also specially greeted Liu Zhou and his party at the company gate.

Although they received the notice that the new boss would be coming at short notice, as Liu Zhou said, they had already been prepared for the new boss to take over the company.

Liu Zhou directly gathered the company's employees and announced to them the new president of Summit Entertainment, Anthony Edwards.

The original president of Summit Entertainment was the company's founder and major shareholder Patrick Wattsberg. Now that he has cashed out and left, his position has been vacated, saving Liu Zhou a lot of trouble.

The second thing Liu Zhou announced to everyone was that the company would maintain the status quo and would not carry out any layoffs.

Now is the time when the financial crisis is raging, and almost most companies in the United States are frantically laying off employees.

Liu Zhou has now announced that there will be no layoffs, and this news is undoubtedly great news for employees.

Previously, they had seen many company bosses sell their companies, which made them nervous. They were always worried that after the new boss took over the company, he would lay off a large number of employees in order to reduce the burden.

Now that they heard that the new boss had decided not to lay off employees, everyone couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief. Some of those who were under greater pressure even burst into tears of joy.

Liu Zhou saw their expressions, but there was no ripple in his heart.

It's not that Liu Zhou is kind, but Liu Zhou is planning to manage and even expand the scale of Summit Entertainment. How could he lay off employees?

Of course, if there is a need to lay off employees, Liu Zhou will do so without hesitation.

Liu Zhou will not feel any burden about the layoffs. After all, this is the sin of your own country.

After announcing these two things, Liu Zhou adjourned the meeting and continued working.

Liu Zhou brought Zhang Zhao and Anthony Edwards to the president's office.

After the three of them sat down, Liu Zhou took the lead and said to Anthony Edwards, "Anthony, the first thing you should do after you take office is to move the company's headquarters from New York back to Los Angeles."

Liu Zhou really couldn't understand what the previous boss of Summit Entertainment was thinking, placing the production department in Hollywood but the headquarters in New York.

Some other large companies place their headquarters in New York because they have media groups above them, and the group headquarters is in New York, which makes it convenient to communicate with the headquarters.

Dingfeng Entertainment has nothing, but it is imitating others. This is not only not conducive to the operation of the company, but also increases operating costs.

Logically speaking, the three founders of Summit Entertainment should understand this principle. Liu Zhou seriously suspects that the reason they do this may be for their other investments.

"Ok!"

"As for other vacant positions in the company, you can recruit new staff yourself when the time comes."

The three founders of Summit Entertainment have a tight grip on the company. In addition to Patrick Wattsberg as president, the other two are responsible for production and distribution respectively.

However, the abilities of the three are indeed quite good, and their cooperation is very complementary, which is why Summit Entertainment has grown to its current scale.

Now that all three have left, the production and distribution departments are both without a leader, and the deputy in the distribution department, who was also someone's confidant, has also left.

So now the distribution department of Summit Entertainment is really leaderless.

Fortunately, Anthony Edwards comes from a distribution background and served as the director of distribution when he was at Lionsgate. He can temporarily support the company's distribution department.

But he is the president after all, and it is impossible for him to be busy with the specific work of distribution all the time, so he needs to recruit a head of the distribution department.

Of course, the director of the production department also needs to be recruited, or his deputy needs to be promoted.

As for the specific arrangements, it is up to the president Anthony Edwards to worry about it.

"Okay, Boss!"

Anthony Edwards adjusted his mindset quickly. He and Liu Zhou were friends before, but now they have become boss and employee.

"Anthony, you should go ahead and get busy. Get thoroughly familiar with the entire company before you start working."

Anthony Edwards responded and left the office.

At this time, Liu Zhou said to Zhang Zhao:

"Mr. Zhang, you need to arrange our own people in other functional departments of the company, especially the finance department. We must have our own people. We can't let the foreigners cheat us.

I don’t want to work so hard to acquire a company and end up working for someone else.”

"Understood. I have prepared the people."

"As for the production and distribution departments, we may not know much about them and don't need to intervene too much, but we still need to add some sand in.

We all know that these two departments are the best at accounting. We can stay out of it, but we can’t be cheated.”

"Okay Mr. Liu."

“There’s nothing else to do. Just arrange the things I asked you to do and then finish the acquisition. Then you can return home as soon as possible.

We need to officially launch the listing plan for Golden Harvest. This matter has been delayed for long enough.”

"Understood, Mr. Liu. I will deal with the matter in the United States as soon as possible."

When Zhang Zhao heard Liu Zhou's last words, he couldn't help but feel a little happy.

The listing of Golden Harvest is something that these executives have been looking forward to for a long time.

After Zhang Zhao left, Liu Zhou breathed a sigh of relief.

It took nearly half a year to finally acquire Summit Entertainment, a relatively well-known Hollywood film company.

Liu Zhou looked around the president's office. It was a bit empty and not very large, at least smaller than his office in Hong Kong.

But now Liu Zhou was sitting here and felt very good. This made him truly feel that Summit Entertainment belonged to him.

After showing off for a while, Liu Zhou also began to understand some specific details about the current situation of Summit Entertainment.

For a film company that is not one of the Big Seven in Hollywood, the most important things are its film library, production capabilities and distribution capabilities.

Summit Entertainment was founded in 1993, which is fifteen years ago.

In recent years, in addition to the films produced by Summit Entertainment itself, it has also acquired the copyrights of many other films.

Although they are not very well-known, the key to a film library is to accumulate little by little. The seven major Hollywood film libraries also have the copyrights of many unknown movies.

In total, this includes the copyrights to more than 1,200 films, including the copyrights to well-known films such as "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels", "Vanilla Sky", "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" and the "Step Up" series.

The most valuable of course is the "Step Up" series. As a well-known youth film in the United States, the two films that have been released have done very well at the box office, and sequels can be filmed in the future.

According to data from the previous two years, Summit Entertainment's copyright library can bring the company a stable income of two to three million US dollars each year.

In addition to these film libraries, Summit Entertainment currently has two films that have not yet been released, and both are well-known to Liu Zhou.

One of them is "Twilight", which, needless to say, is one of the more well-known Hollywood film series.

Another one is called "The Hurt Locker", a masterpiece that looks into human nature through war.

This film won six awards including Best Picture and Best Director at the 2010 Academy Awards.

It can be said that Summit Entertainment truly gained a foothold in Hollywood through the two films "Twilight" series and "The Hurt Locker".

In the past, Summit Entertainment was well-known, but its ability to resist risks was not strong. It generally produced only one or two films a year.

If Summit Entertainment hadn't developed the distribution capabilities, the film company would have had no highlights.

When it comes to distribution capabilities, Summit Entertainment is pretty good.

The distribution capability mentioned here is not just about distributing movies to theaters, but also includes the distribution of other derivative copyrights.

Currently, Summit Entertainment can secure 1,500 theaters for the opening of a movie, which is considered a good strength in Hollywood.

This is just the case when the movie opens in a maximum of 1,500 theaters. Of course, if the box office performance of the released movie is good, the number of theaters can be further increased.

As for the development of other film copyrights, Summit Entertainment has also established cooperative relationships with many cable TV stations and other toy and card companies.

In fact, to be honest, the current Summit Entertainment is just a slightly smaller version of Lionsgate.

Summit Entertainment's North American distribution capabilities are not much different from Lionsgate, but the former does not have overseas distribution capabilities.

As for production capabilities, Summit Entertainment is relatively inferior. Lionsgate produces no less than three films a year and is also capable of controlling major productions.

(End of this chapter)