Chapter 166: One Family's Joy, Another Family's Sorrow

The Christmas season kicked off with Home Alone 2 taking the lead. Its performance so far was quite impressive, and it even had a shot at challenging the box office numbers of the first installment.

Star Wars had finally finished its theatrical run, pulling in a staggering 2.1 billion dollars in North America alone—a truly terrifying figure. Seeing several films post strong box office numbers this year, Hollywood concluded that the cinematic winter had finally passed. As long as a movie was decent, audiences would still open their wallets.

Yet, completely out of nowhere, a bolt from the blue struck: United Artists' Heaven's Gate hit a catastrophic roadblock, raking in a paltry several hundred thousand dollars on its opening day.

Across nearly two thousand screens, such a result was utterly dismal. Anyone could figure it out just by calculating the per-screen average; the theaters could only be described as resembling ghost towns.

Making a profit was no longer the issue. For a movie with a total investment exceeding fifty million dollars, recovering even a fraction of a million was looking doubtful. There was simply no need to elaborate on just how badly it had bombed.

This sudden catastrophe sent shockwaves of dread through the major Hollywood studios. A box office disaster of this magnitude was enough to drive a film company straight into bankruptcy.

Sharing their misery were European hot money speculators who had been extremely optimistic about the project. Now, they might as well form an orderly queue to jump off a pier.

Even an Oscar-winning director had flopped so hard that no one dared to invest anymore. Thinking ahead to the next summer season, a group of industry heavyweights felt like giving up the ghost.

Warner Bros. was in the most agonizing dilemma: could Superman truly break through the encirclement?

George Lucas was equally tormented. He had no confidence in beating Agent Cody Banks—or rather, a similarly positioned challenger—though fortunately, their relationship was tolerable, and enough distance had been kept between their release dates.

William White cared little for their inner turmoil. Now that he had capital, he needed to accelerate the pace of his stock accumulation.

Before securing financing, a company's so-called valuation lacked precision; at the very least, banks would not base their calculations on such figures. Things were different now. The shares purchased by others could be traded openly, and since the market acknowledged that value, his company was genuinely worth that much.

Naturally, should he wish to use them as collateral for a bank loan, the lenders would still apply a discount based on actual circumstances.

The news of United Artists' monumental flop quickly faded from public attention, overshadowed by a far more shocking revelation: the combined valuation of William White's three companies approached five billion US dollars.

With a new richest man born, who would care about the life or death of a failing studio?

What’s that? You say he carried massive amounts of loans?

So what? Wall Street elites were not passive onlookers. William White’s loans had not been funneled into his own companies; every last penny had been poured straight into the stock market and real estate.

No one dared mock his youth anymore. Acquiring NBC? It turned out to be completely effortless. As for those print media outlets under his umbrella, they were exceptionally well-run, seemingly beholden to neither the Donkeys nor the Elephants, daring to expose any scandal they uncovered.

Fine, you might argue they only sang praises for their own boss.

That seemed entirely normal, didn't it? If they constantly tried to undermine their employer at every turn, even a saint with the patience of a turtle would snap!

The emergence of this new richest man created a massive uproar. Not only did the wealthy elite begin to pay attention to the IT industry, but the general public also turned their gaze toward the sector.

No matter how economists blustered, nobody listened; the power of a concrete role model was supreme.

Regrettably, while this industry lacked a prohibitively high financial barrier to entry, it was heavily guarded by technical walls. Whether one intended to work in software or hardware, making any headway without sufficient knowledge reserves was utterly impossible.

Poach some talent, then! After all, that was standard practice for everyone.

Unfortunately, poaching William White’s talent proved exceedingly difficult. His core employees would never abandon their current stakes in the company.

Then again, the more critical the personnel, the better they understood just how formidable their company was. Even if Big Blue stepped into the ring, victory was far from guaranteed, so everyone else might as well wash up and go to sleep.

This storm thoroughly cemented William White's fame. Previously, people knew he was wealthy, but they could never have imagined he was wealthy to *this* extent.

"Young master, your security detail needs to be expanded."

"Uncle Fu, given how tense things were recently, didn't I already increase it?"

Uncle Fu could only shake his head with a wry smile. Now that everyone knew just how filthy rich he was, talking about keeping a low profile was simply inviting trouble.

"Young master, if you had matched your current profile back then, the scale of it would have completely eclipsed what we have now."

"All right, all right, I'll listen to you."

William White grumbled internally. How on earth was he supposed to go out and carouse in the future? He was practically walking around like a fattened hog waiting to be slaughtered at any second.

Do not mistake this for a joke. The grandson of J. Paul Getty had been kidnapped by Sicilians who demanded a twenty-million-dollar ransom, and when the old miser tried to haggle, they simply mailed him a severed ear.

America was genuinely unsafe, and William White, standing tall enough to catch the wind, was a prime target—not to mention his rivals who were still lurking in the shadows, watching him like tigers eyeing their prey.

Directly participating in a hit was unlikely, but providing a little covert assistance? Why not?

Never underestimate the ruthlessness of certain old-timers; many of them operated precisely that way. Legally speaking, it constituted first-degree murder, even if they didn't pull the trigger themselves.

But could you prove it?

"Dad, is he really the richest man in America now? That seems way too easy."

"Hah, you really are something. Is it truly that easy? Setting aside the fact that he's an absolute monster, he's gone toe-to-toe with several old foxes and hasn't lost ground once."

"My head is spinning a bit. While that game is decent and the comics are alright, they can't possibly be worth that much money, right? Surely he didn't pull off some trick to hoodwink a whole bunch of old-timers."

"Indeed, the way he bamboozled those veterans has sent the trading exchange straight into a frenzy."

When the day's events were reported, the IT sector erupted in uproar. Naturally, they understood that computers could be linked—that was standard work for large mainframe systems—the real question was how he had managed to achieve it on personal PCs.

The experts present that day were mostly Wall Street elites. At best, they could tell you what the technology was, but they were utterly clueless about the specific parameters.

Countless people were interested, but unfortunately, he showed no inclination to make the details public. Instead, he swore up and down that the system was unstable and that without three years of technical accumulation, commercial implementation was completely out of the question.

The difference this time was that his enterprise was now a public company. After all, those investment banks had put down hard cash, and naturally, they demanded accountability toward their investors; keeping information entirely locked down was no longer an option.

What happened if the technology leaked?

Ha! They frankly didn't care. This highlighted the fundamental divergence between founders and investors: the more information leaked, the more valuable the shares in their hands became, and if worst came to worst, they could always cash out.

There was simply no avoiding it. Expansion required following this exact procedure. Trying to fund growth solely through earned profits would not only put one at a severe time disadvantage, but the tax implications would also be far less favorable.

Warren Buffett had consistently remained near the top of the wealth rankings, yet how much tax did the old man actually pay in a year? See? That was the game of the ultra-wealthy.

In America, taxes on so-called long-term investments were virtually non-existent. As long as one kept their money perpetually parked in the stock market, the tax burden was practically nil.

Why weren't there massive speculative real estate buying groups in America?

Because such income was viewed as unethical, and property owners would be driven half-crazed by various taxes. Holding onto real estate long-term didn't work either—there was property tax to contend with, after all.

You might suggest living off rental income as a landlord, but that held little real appeal when the returns from the stock market vastly outperformed the housing market.

As for Heavenly China?

That topic could easily stretch on for an entire year, and you would all accuse me of padding my word count for extra pay.