I’m in Hollywood - Chapter 1211

[The first thousand one hundred and seventy-six chapters]

The next day, the debate in the media about the federal Justice Department’s restrictions on Yahoo’s browser really grew louder.

Although the whole thing has basically been determined to be provoked by Microsoft behind the scenes, other Internet companies suppressed by the Firefly system obviously also regard this incident as an opportunity.

Almost all Internet companies feel that they will surely gain more market share if they can force Yahoo to give up its monopoly on Internet browser software.

Now, companies such as at-home are taking the initiative, and other Internet companies are naturally willing to follow suit.

Although the Justice Department’s hearing on Yahoo’s browser was scheduled for 2:00 p.m. Eastern time, Yahoo’s stock price plummeted 3.3% just after 9:30 a.m. due to the influence of the media.

As expected by Eric, AOL-Time Warner, at-home and even Microsoft and other new technology companies that have business competition with Yahoo, have seen their stock prices rise to varying degrees.

The entire Nasdaq market also continued to rebound from the previous two weeks in the following hour or so.

However, at 11 o’clock in the morning, following an announcement on the official website of Firefly Investments, many executives of Internet companies who were still secretly excited became extremely happy in the blink of an eye.

The announcement stated that in order to raise funds for the company’s next development, Firefly Investments will appropriately reduce its holdings in Yahoo, Cisco, Qualcomm and other companies in the next week.

Although this announcement is short and even a bit perfunctory, after counting the hundreds of thousands to millions of stock reduction plans announced by Firefly Investments, countless people were surprised to find that Firefly Investments understated a plan to reduce their holdings. , the total value of the shares involved reached 3 billion US dollars.

If it was the peak period of the Nasdaq market a few months ago, and $3 billion of funds were cashed out within a week, as long as the operation was done properly, it would not have much impact on the Nasdaq index.

Over the last few weeks of the Shamrock Fund’s reduction, more than $3 billion has been cashed out of the Nasdaq every week.

However, it is clear to everyone that the situation is completely different from a few months ago.

The Nasdaq stock market just went through a big, heart-pounding crash that left countless people with heavy losses.

In the past two weeks, although the Nasdaq index has begun to rebound under the actions of various parties, investors who have just experienced a stock market crash are basically a group of frightened birds.

And, while the broader market trend is rebounding, stocks on the Nasdaq are nowhere near as active as they were a few months ago.

At this time, the Firefly system, which plays an important role in the entire new technology industry, changed its attitude of supporting the Nasdaq market for several months, and suddenly announced a plan to reduce its holdings, and it was 3 billion US dollars at a time.

Even though many understood that the matter was related to Yahoo’s upcoming Justice Department hearing, a strong sense of panic was quickly brewing on the Nasdaq.

Reduced holdings of $3 billion in one week, so what about next week?

Will Firefly Investment continue to reduce its holdings?

You know, despite the collapse of the Nasdaq index, the value of the technology stock market directly controlled by Firefly Investments still exceeds $200 billion.

The $3 billion reduction plan may already be equivalent to the market value of many new technology companies, but it will basically not affect the proportion of firefly investment holdings in various technology companies.

Then, it is entirely possible for Firefly Investment to continue to cash out after the first week of reduction.

Although the Nasdaq stock market, which has started to rebound but is still fragile inside, can it experience several US$3 billion reductions in Firefly Investments?

Various ideas flashed in the minds of countless investors, and with the announcement of Firefly Investments, a batch of technology company stock selling orders appeared directly in the market.

Subsequently, many investors almost subconsciously began to follow the trend and sell.

As a result, the Nasdaq’s two-week uptrend came to an abrupt end.

From the announcement of Firefly Investment at 11:00 in the morning and the unceremonious selling of stocks, in the following hour, the Nasdaq turned sharply down with the emergence of a large number of panic stock selling orders, from the highest point of 3677 points all the way to 3612 points.

The share prices of technology companies such as Yahoo, Cisco, Qualcomm, and Amazon have fallen sharply. Yahoo’s share price has fallen two and a half hours from the opening, and the cumulative decline has even reached 13.3%.

However, this is obviously just the beginning.

In the afternoon, some investors who were still on the sidelines felt that the situation was not good, and also joined the ranks of selling.

This inevitably led to the further spread of the selling trend, and the stock prices of new technology companies outside the Firefly system also began to plummet.

Looking at the decline curve of the Nasdaq index that seemed to be pulled directly down by a giant hand, the entire new technology industry was a little bit restless and made various responses one after another.

Subsequently, Internet media platforms, including aol and msn portals, successively issued circulars, accusing the firefly system of the sudden reduction of its holdings.

The aol portal unceremoniously pointed out in a press release that Firefly Investments has accumulated at least $9 billion in cash through the sale of AOL shares last year and the transfer of fireflyer shares this year.

If you count the profits from Nokia, Cisco and other companies under Firefly Investments, Firefly Investment’s current cash reserve has even reached the level of tens of billions of dollars.

In addition, aol directly revealed that the Firefly Group Clover Fund also hoarded a large amount of cash, the amount is not even lower than that of Firefly Investment Company.

The entire Firefly system has such a strong cash reserve, and, for more than a year, the only major expenditure of the Firefly system has been the acquisition of Sony Pictures for less than 3 billion US dollars. Then, the Firefly investment at this time is not at all. Need to sell technology stocks in hand.

The reason why Firefly Investments did this is to use the entire Nasdaq market as a threat to force the Federal Department of Justice to give up its intervention and investigation of Yahoo’s browser monopoly market share.

Although everyone understands that what is stated in the AOL press release is entirely true.

However, AOL’s ‘outspoken’ attitude still makes many people sigh that this is a young company after all.

At least, the editor-in-chief of the aol portal who let this article be published is definitely not that well-versed in the world.

There are many things that everyone is doing, but it is absolutely impossible to say.

Sure enough, less than 10 minutes after the article on the aol portal was published, the lawyer’s letter from Firefly Investments was sent directly to Steve Case.

At the same time, Firefly Investments also responded unceremoniously on the Yahoo portal, saying that every step of Firefly Investments’ reduction plan strictly complies with relevant federal regulations. The form notified the majority of shareholders, which is enough to demonstrate the responsible attitude of Firefly Investments to the company’s investors.

Therefore, aol portal’s speculation on the purpose of firefly investment reduction is a malicious smear. Firefly investment company requires aol portal to immediately withdraw the relevant manuscript, and at the same time, the editor who wrote this article and aol portal will be denounced on the grounds of infringement of reputation. The website filed a lawsuit.

When many people were secretly expecting that AOL would forcibly confront the Firefly system, the article on the aol portal disappeared within half an hour.

Although the aol portal did not make any apology, this kind of active retreat of AOL has made many other smaller news portals become more restrained.

Some people have noticed once again that although they have experienced several large-scale reductions, after the merger in the first half of the year, Firefly Investments is still the major shareholder of AOL-Time Warner Group, with a shareholding ratio of more than 4.1%.

Moreover, as many of the original investment banking institutions continued to reduce their holdings and exit in the past year, Firefly Investments, which has always retained its stocks, has risen step by step in the ranks of the major shareholders of AOL-Time Warner.

Unconsciously, Firefly Investment’s 4.1% stake in AOL-Time Warner Group has become second only to Ted Turner’s 6.5%, making it the second largest shareholder of AOL-Time Warner.

Although Firefly Investment did not have a seat on the AOL-Time Warner board of directors for a series of reasons at the beginning, it even authorized the voting rights of its shares to AOL management in the merger case in the first half of the year.

However, after this episode, the outside world once again realized that even if it was just an external shareholder who could not intervene in the management of AOL-Time Warner Group at all, even if Firefly Investment’s shareholding did not even reach the proportion reported to the Federal Exchange Commission.

But in any case, Firefly Investment is the second largest shareholder of AOL-Time Warner after all, and it is impossible for any large company to ignore the existence of such a large shareholder.

The Firefly system almost never exerts its own influence on AOL-Time Warner on weekdays, and even allows AOL-Time Warner to compete with the Firefly System Technology Company.

However, as long as the Firefly system exerts its strength, AOL-Time Warner still has to honestly remove news that is unfavorable to the Firefly system within half an hour.

When the Nasdaq market was in mourning with Firefly Investment’s plan to reduce its holdings, the afternoon Justice Department hearing was held as scheduled.

In accordance with a pre-agreed strategy, Yahoo CEO Ian Grenier responded with a loud voice to the Justice Department’s crackdown on Yahoo’s browser in front of Attorney General Janet Reynolds, who presided over the hearing in person, and dozens of reporters from various parties. all kinds of doubts.

In response to the doubts of the Ministry of Justice that Yahoo’s browser’s high market share restricts the development of Internet companies in the same industry, Ian Grenier directly countered.

Besides the Yahoo browser, Yahoo is the pioneer of the industry, whether it is a portal website business, an e-mail business or a search engine business.

Many Internet companies of the same type are directly imitating Yahoo’s various business models, and some of these imitators have directly copied many of Yahoo’s technical patents, which largely violated Yahoo’s core interests.

However, in the face of these imitators, Yahoo not only did not fight back, but in a very open attitude, took the initiative to authorize a large number of technical patents to promote the development of the entire industry, which is enough to show that Yahoo is a company full of social responsibility. .

During the two-hour hearing, through careful preparation and skillful on-the-spot performance, Ian Gnear almost completely controlled the rhythm of the entire hearing.

Although Janet Reynolds did not directly announce the decision of the Ministry of Justice in the end, even the inexperienced guests at the hearing, taking into account the current situation in all aspects, had a hunch that the Ministry of Justice could not take anything against Yahoo browser this time. substantive action.

After all, as Ian Grenier said at the hearing, unlike Microsoft’s expensive Windows operating system, the Yahoo browser is completely free, and the software doesn’t add to the user’s expense, not only that, The unified interface standard is also beneficial for users to surf the Internet more smoothly.

At the same time, Yahoo invests tens of millions of dollars in this free browser every year, and the company has enough rights to enjoy the platform benefits brought by this product.

Yahoo has kept an open mind enough to not be obliged to further accommodate companies that follow suit and imitate Yahoo’s business model.

After the hearing, Yahoo immediately published the full text of the hearing and released the complete video resources.

Immediately afterwards, the media platform of the entire Firefly system also exerted its force and began to conduct and discuss the control field.

From the afternoon of that day, the direction of the wind gradually began to favor the Firefly system.

After all, Eric did not rush to Washington to join in the fun.

However, that afternoon, he received a call from Janet Reynolds. The moderate-styled female attorney general said that the Justice Department would officially announce the results of the hearing tomorrow, and hoped that Firefly Investments would cancel the plan to reduce its holdings and avoid Further stimulate the trend of the Nasdaq market.

Along with the nearly one-sided hearing, the Nasdaq displayed an equally one-sided stance throughout Monday’s session.

In just one day, the Nasdaq dropped 177 points.

Some tech companies even fell back to their lowest point two weeks ago within six and a half hours.

However, although the Department of Justice has made a statement on the Yahoo browser, Eric does not intend to give up this reduction.

After all, once the reduction of holdings is temporarily abandoned, it is tantamount to bluntly admitting that the reduction of holdings of Firefly Investments is putting pressure on the federal government.

This is not only in the face of Firefly’s investment in itself, but also in the face of the Ministry of Justice.

Therefore, the next day, although the Department of Justice held a press conference on time at nine o’clock in the morning, announcing that as long as the Yahoo browser maintains a consistent operating strategy, the Department of Justice will not interfere too much with this software.

However, after the opening in the morning, the firefly system continued to reduce its holdings, and the entire Nasdaq market continued to decline.

UU reading www.sonicmtl.com

A siege that was originally intended to be launched against Yahoo ended hastily almost before it started. Now, many people have experienced a strong sense of frustration.

The Nasdaq fell another 97 points throughout the session on Tuesday.

Although today’s decline has begun to slow relative to yesterday’s decline, the rebound trend across the Nasdaq has clearly come to an end.

Wall Street, which had been expecting the Nasdaq to return to a high of 4,000 points, looked at the Nasdaq index, which had fallen to 3,403 points, with a feeling of crying without tears.

After all, having just experienced the crash, Wall Street was extremely cautious in reducing its holdings and leaving the market during this rebound. In just two weeks, it was far from enough for the major investment bank funds on Wall Street to fully cash out the technology stocks in their hands.

Now, the situation has turned again, and it will only be more difficult to cash out the stocks in hand.

Moreover, what is more serious is that the last Nasdaq rebound was largely the result of the firefly system taking the initiative to announce a series of positive news.

But now, the Firefly system, which has just been put together by competitors, will obviously not make any moves to support the Nasdaq market.

So, in addition to the firefly system, who else can play this role?

The answer is, no.

Another available Microsoft antitrust case, now settled.

Moreover, even Microsoft does not have the solid foundation of the Firefly system that can reverse the trend of the entire Nasdaq market.

If it is other capital forces, Wall Street can also exert influence on it.

But for the Firefly system, which has become its own system, the entire Wall Street has become powerless.

[End of this Chapter]