Chapter 897 Three Major Events
New Year's Day of 1999 has just passed. For the people of Yanjing, this is the last New Year's Day at the end of the century. It really has no special meaning.
But for Guowen Publishing House, the New Year's Day that just passed was extremely extraordinary.
On January 1, 1999, Guowen Publishing House was officially renamed China Guowen Publishing House and Culture Group Co., Ltd., completing the transformation from a public institution to a state-owned enterprise.
The newly established China Guowen Publishing and Culture Group Co., Ltd.'s business covers many fields such as publishing, copyright trade, import and export trade of publications, printing and copying, publication logistics and distribution, art business, information services, scientific and technological development, film and television development, and audio-visual product publishing.
As soon as the news came out, it quickly sparked huge discussions in both the political and business circles in the country.
Since the reform and opening up, there have been numerous cases of state-owned enterprises being restructured into mixed-ownership enterprises or private enterprises. This is also one of the important means and measures for the success of China's reform and opening up.
However, the transformation of a public institution into a state-owned enterprise is the first time in China's reform process.
Moreover, the role change of Guowenshe is unexpected to the outside world.
That was the name of the newly born group company.
Publishing is the main business of Guowen Publishing House. It is understandable that Guowen Publishing House wants to become bigger and stronger and become a group company. However, the word "culture" is added after "publishing", which means there is a lot to say, far beyond the business covered by Guowen Publishing House's original publishing industry.
However, this is normal. In recent years, Guowen Publishing House has been building the so-called "full copyright operation plan" and has achieved outstanding results. After restructuring and integration into a group company, it naturally wants to make great strides in the cultural field.
Guowen Publishing House has become China Guowen Publishing and Culture Group. There have been major changes in the organizational structure, and various rules, regulations and management methods will also be reformed.
Despite several months of preparation, after completing the industrial and commercial changes at the end of December, Guowen Publishing House fell into a state of busyness and chaos.
It took several days for Guowen Publishing House to sort out its internal affairs.
In the second week after New Year's Day, the company headquarters sent a group notice to all subordinate units and holding subsidiaries, announcing that a group meeting would be held on January 10. The venue of the meeting was set in the Yanjing Municipal Government Auditorium. Guowen Publishing House, a bureau-level unit, went to the Yanjing Municipal Government Auditorium to hold the meeting. This was borrowed by Lin Weimin through a favor.
At the first general meeting of the group, thousands of employees of Guowen Press in Beijing were taken to the auditorium of Yanjing Municipal Government by bus, and the auditorium was crowded with people.
In addition to many employees, leaders from various government departments also attended the conference today.
As the first general meeting after Guowen Press was transformed into China Guowen Publishing and Culture Group, the new leadership was the first to appear in front of all employees, with Lin Weimin walking at the front of the team.
Now he is not only the president of Guowen Publishing House, but also the chairman and general manager of China Guowen Publishing and Culture Group Co., Ltd. He truly has absolute power.
After the first few leaders who were invited to attend the conference had spoken, it was his turn to speak as the person in charge, and the employees below were full of expectations.
"Dear leaders and dear comrades, hello, in this..."
When Lin Weimin came up, he first spoke some standard words for a few minutes, and then mentioned the long-term plan after the establishment of the group. The future sounded bright, but the distance was too far away, and no one felt much. It was not until Lin Weimin talked about the group's plan for 1999 that the employees' interest was aroused.
“I won’t read what’s written in the manuscript. Let’s talk about it in plain words. This year our group will do three big things.
First, we built a headquarters building. Guowen Press has always worked together with Renmin Press, and some departments and subsidiaries also worked outside. This situation was not a problem before, but now that a group company has been established, in order to better coordinate and communicate between the group headquarters and various subsidiaries and departments, it is the best way to bring everyone together to work.
Nowadays, the land in Yanjing is getting more and more expensive, and it is better to build than to rent. In order to show support for our group's work, the higher authorities have provided us with a low-interest loan of 500 million yuan through China Construction Bank and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. This money will be used by the group to purchase land and build the group's headquarters building.
I think everyone must be discussing in their minds at the moment that it is too wasteful to spend money right after the transformation without waiting to make money.
The second thing I want to talk about is that you have to spend money first.
After the group's leadership team's research and decision and the group's board of directors' approval, the group's holding subsidiary Wenhua Films will acquire Hong Kong Tomson Films Co., Ltd. for RMB 25 million. Wenhua Films will rely on this acquisition to integrate the film resources of the mainland and Hong Kong, establish itself in China, look to Asia, and build a first-class film company in Asia.
At the same time, Wenhua Films will also plan to be listed on the A-share market, striving to be listed on the domestic A-share market by the end of 1999 or the beginning of 2000, and strive to become the first stock in the domestic film and television industry..."
Lin Weimin said two things in succession. The first thing was to build the group headquarters. The employees' first reaction was happiness. Although building a new office building would cost money, it would not be everyone's money. The office conditions would definitely be better than now, which was good news for the employees.
The second thing made everyone even more excited. Wenhua Films was going to go public, which was a rare event. The employees of Guowen Press had never thought that one day they would have something to do with the word "going public".
The employees were discussing these two things enthusiastically, but they didn't care much about the third thing Lin Weimin mentioned.
The third thing Lin Weimin mentioned was to set up an advertising service department within the group, integrate the advertising resources within the group, actively connect with Internet companies, and expand the advertising business margins outward.
He said a lot of things, but the employees didn't quite understand. They only knew that Guowen Publishing House would focus on advertising business in the future. In addition to utilizing the advertising resources within the group, it would also have to connect with external Internet companies and act as a middleman between Internet companies and advertisers.
This seemed to be the new money-making business that Lin Weimin was looking for for the group. The crowd could not make any sense of it, but were particularly interested in the two things that had just happened to spend money.
The two-hour group meeting ended, and thousands of employees left the auditorium in an orderly manner and took the bus back to their respective offices.
Lin Weimin politely saw off several leaders. Yu Shu asked, "Weimin, the advertising service department you mentioned is to connect Internet companies and advertisers. Is this the new business growth point you found for your group?"
Lin Weimin smiled and said, "Leader, you want to ask why our publishing and cultural group has started advertising, right?"
Yu Shu smiled playfully but did not deny it.
Lin Weimin explained calmly: "You also know that we have invested in two Internet companies before. Nowadays, the domestic Internet industry is booming, but the profit model of Internet companies is relatively simple, and most of them are selling advertisements.
I think this is a good direction for business development. With the continuous development of the Internet industry in the future, advertising revenue will surely grow steadily. I don’t know whether it can exceed the advertising revenue of television media, but I think it is just around the corner to surpass print media. This is an undeveloped virgin land.
Besides, our Chinese Literature Society already has advertising business, but it is not professional. We can use this incident to guide the advertising business of the society to the right track and walk on more legs!"
After listening to Lin Weimin's explanation, Yu Shu nodded and said, "You young people are smart. Work hard!"
"must!"
After seeing off the leaders, today's meeting came to an end.
Lin Weimin said to Xu Feng who came to attend the conference with a pleasant face: "Ms. Xu, thank you for your hard work today."
Xu Feng smiled, "Mr. Lin, you are too polite. We are a family now."
Lin Weimin laughed and said, "That's right, we are a family now."
The decision to acquire Xu Feng's Hong Kong Tomson Pictures by Wenhua Films was made by Lin Weimin. Wenhua Films is the bridgehead for the development of the Guowen Group in the film and television industry. After several years of development, it has been operating well and is the undisputed leader in the domestic film and television industry. At this point in time, going public has become an issue that must be considered.
Since the beginning of this year, Wenhua Films has released four works, and the four films have brought Wenhua Films nearly 80 million in box office revenue. If the copyright income from previous years' works is included, Wenhua Films' revenue this year is about 140 million.
It looks good, but this is the ceiling that Wenhua Film and Television can reach as a leading company in the domestic film and television industry. Of course, the premise is that Wenhua Film and Television does not have any blockbuster works this year. The company is currently in production of "The Last Tang Dynasty", the last blockbuster this year, and the Lunar New Year animated film "Shuke and Beta: The Best in the Year of the Rabbit" is also in production and has not been released.
If Wenhua Film and Television wants to move forward, it will face a market bottleneck. This market bottleneck is caused by the overall environment and cannot be broken through in a short period of time.
Since the room for growth is limited, we might as well take advantage of this time to work hard on our internal strength, deepen our market presence, and at the same time extend our tentacles outward.
Lin Weimin said that Wenhua Films will look to Asia, but these are just empty words. Right now, the most practical approach for Wenhua Films is to deeply cultivate the Southeast Asian market and establish distribution channels in Southeast Asia. There are a large number of Chinese people here, and as long as they are managed properly, they will be a natural box office for Chinese-language films.
The acquisition of Xu Feng's Hong Kong Tomson Films can, on the one hand, expand Mandarin's business channels in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, and on the other hand, attract a large number of outstanding Hong Kong film and television practitioners to move north.
After Lin Weimin proposed this idea to Xu Feng, she hesitated for two days and then agreed.
In recent years, influenced by Hollywood movies, the Hong Kong film industry has been in decline, and her film company is in a bad situation. Now that the Guowen Group is willing to take over, it is naturally a good thing.
Besides, she is also one of the shareholders of Wenhua Film and Television, so doing so is mutually beneficial. After all, she will also benefit when the company goes public in the future.
Wenhua Films spent 25 million yuan to acquire her company. She made a profit, and Wenhua Films also did not lose money. The copyright library of dozens of films of Tangchen Pictures alone was enough for Wenhua Films to make up for its losses.
Xu Feng attended the meeting of Guowen Group today and had to catch a flight back to Hong Kong in the evening to sort out the company's internal affairs. Lin Weimin invited her to dinner at noon.
After the first meeting of the Guowen Group, the atmosphere within the Guowen Society was warm for two days and then became quiet, because everyone found that apart from the addition of a mother-in-law at the top, there seemed to be no major changes after the establishment of the group.
It was not until a week later that news about the group's recruitment plan for this year began to circulate in the company.
210 people, a full 210 vacancies. This recruitment scale is more than the number of people hired by Guowen Press in the past ten years.
Nowadays, the assigned work has long been cancelled. In the past two years, the Guowen Press has been recruiting recent graduates from major universities in Yenching.
Now that Guowen Group has been newly established, it is going to recruit 210 people at once. Fresh graduates alone cannot meet the demand. Most of the 210 jobs require relevant professional work experience. These recruited employees will be incorporated into the Guowen Group headquarters, various departments and subsidiaries.
At the beginning of the year 1999, Guowen Group is about to usher in its first talent expansion since its establishment. These talents will also lay a solid foundation for the future development of the group.
(End of this chapter)
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