What does it mean to have unexpected situations? If you ask Mik Zafirowski this sentence, although he doesn't understand Chinese, he will definitely be able to deeply understand the meaning of it.

It seems that even now, no one is willing to believe that the Canadian Nortel Network, which has a glorious history of a century, will fall into a difficult situation, just like there are still quite a few people in the company who are still living in the peak period with a total market value of up to 267 billion US dollars.

Mik Zafirowski came to Nortel Networks from Motorola in 2005, and for this, Nortel Networks paid him a termination fee of more than 10 million yuan. After he came to Nortel Networks, everything he did was to stop the company's decline, but even though he tried his best, he still could not stop the company's decline.

Perhaps the figures can more vividly describe the current badness of Nortel Networks, because their total market value of US$267 billion in UU has dropped to US$1 million now, and the company's value has shrunk by more than twenty times.

But this was obtained when the company sold a lot of industries, for example, they sold their business to Alcatel for $300 million, which completely quit the market.

Nortel Networks' decline not only comes from business and external competition, but also from the company. For example, the financial fraud storm in 2003 not only caused a plunge in the Toronto Stock Exchange, but also forced Nortel Networks to reach a settlement agreement with shareholders who sued them at the end of UU, but the company had to pay $50 million for this.

As the saying goes, it rains all the time, Mik Zafirowski can now deeply feel this helplessness.

But what made him even more helpless was that the world had completely changed. Whether it was the once giant Nortel Networks or Motorola, the giant in the mobile phone industry, the situation in the past two years has been constantly telling him a cruel reality, that is, the future will no longer be their future.

But will it be his future?

Mik Zafirowski looked at the young Chinese with black hair and yellow skin in front of him. He was the super richest man in the world in the past few years. He created several of the most well-known websites on the Internet and also developed a mobile phone that is known as the revolutionary field of communications, which brought him and his company amazing profits.

And all this happened in less than three or four years.

There is a serious generation gap, which is certain, because Mick Zafirowsky asked someone to investigate this Chinese named Ye Qiu. Who knows, if you don’t know, after checking, you will find out that he is the most famous head coach of the world’s football club today, and has a professional team in Europe that competes in the Premier League and Champions League.

For this reason, he also made up for some European football knowledge, hoping that he could have more common topics with him.

Now everyone knows that with Yezi Technology, it is equivalent to holding a thigh that is too thick to be thicker. The company now has nearly 10 billion US dollars in cash. If all the money is handed over to Nortel Networks, all the difficulties and troubles will be solved. But the problem is that the money belongs to others.

"Mr. Ye Qiu, thank you very much for taking your time from Europe to Toronto." Mick Zafirowski looked very young, in his thirties, a little fat, but very energetic, but in fact he was already in his fifties.

This Macedonian American has a very brilliant resume. He worked for General Electric for 24 years and held a very important position. He joined Motorola's mobile phone department in two thousand years and served as president. In 2005, he came to Nortel Networks with a $1.5 million compensation from Nortel Networks.

His resume witnessed his ability and a very realistic situation, that is, he did not have much affection for Nortel Networks. For him, Nortel Networks is just a new step for him to change jobs, but now this step seems to be sinking.

"Mr. Zafirowski, I believe in my colleagues." Ye Qiu looked at Eliza Moon sitting next to him, as well as Ye Zi Technology's senior executives, Shirley Sandberg, the COO of Ye Zi Technology. They are all behind the acquisition. Ye Zi Technology has been preparing for this step for more than half a year.

"I have had very in-depth communication with you. I also believe that you know better than anyone else about the current situation of Nortel Networks. You only have two paths to go. First, let the Canadian government provide support funds, but I believe that as the financial situation of Nortel Networks deteriorates, this path will no longer be done."

Nortel Networks is not without valuable assets. On the contrary, many of this company are coveted by the outside world or some assets that have not been paid attention to by the outside world are very valuable, but the problem is that they have no cash.

For a company of such a large scale, it is a very scary thing to have no cash.

Yezi Technology is the opposite now. Ye Qiu now has nearly $10 billion in cash in the company account alone, and he himself has billions of euros in cash in the Swiss bank, which is enough to easily complete the acquisition he wants.

Ye Qiu had made sufficient preparations before, and Eliza personally took over this plan because it was related to the future development of Ye Zi Technology. If it succeeds, Ye Zi Technology will take off. If it fails, Ye Zi Technology will continue to be controlled in the next few years.

"The second point, I believe that it is what you introduced to my team before, to sell the company's assets."

Mick Zafirowski nodded, "Yes, Mr. Ye Qiu."

He had to admit that the first road was not working, and the second road was to quench thirst. But everything had to be seen this way. If you don't sell it, it won't take long. It will take half a year or two years to slow down. Sooner or later, Nortel Networks will go bankrupt sooner or later, but if you sell it, you can still exchange it for some time, and maybe there is still room for maneuver.

In fact, Mik Zafirowski has made his idea public on the company's board of directors. He wants to take over the wireless business because it is a money-lossing product, and he invests a lot of R&D funds every year. At the same time, he does not rule out the sale of fiber network and Ethernet services with annual revenue of US$100 million. He is the most valuable business of Nortel Networks.

Zafirowski wants to concentrate on corporate networks and operator service departments, and among them, the optical network business is currently ranked among the top companies in the world, such as Nokia Siemens, Ericsson, Huawei and ZTE. They are all very interested in this business of Nortel Networks.

Yezi Technology is targeting nearly 9,000 patents in the hands of Nortel Networks.

As a rising star, Yezi Technology is poor in patents. Even though it has applied for many patents in the process of developing Zeus mobile phones, it is not too difficult to say that it is compared with giants like Nokia and Motorola, even with competitors like Apple and Microsoft, Yezi Technology is not much behind.

Is there any way to win enough patents for Yezi Technology in the shortest time?

The acquisition, and the more than 8,000 patents in the hands of Nortel Networks are a big cake in Ye Qiu's eyes. The worst thing is that this big cake is not yet familiar with. Even his owner, Nortel Networks itself does not realize its value and how much role it can play in the future.

This is also related to the research and development principles that Nortel Network has always believed in. For example, Nortel Network developed a concept mobile phone with many functions of Zeus mobile phones as early as 1990. From this, we can see the company's R&D and innovation capabilities. They even applied for a lot of patents for this, but they were unable to make a mobile phone in the end.

Moreover, this company always believes in a defensive principle when dealing with patents, that is, not to take the initiative to file lawsuits through patents.

For example, they reached an agreement with Nokia Siemens to use each other's patents, that is, their purpose of applying for patents is to avoid being sued, or to share each other's patents with each other, rather than using patents to attack opponents.

Now Microsoft, Apple, and even Google have not taken action on Yezi Technology, but this does not mean that Yezi Technology has no handle in their hands, because high-tech, especially smartphones, is a very easy thing to fight a patent war, because there are so many parts and software programs in a mobile phone, and there will always be problems.

When the other party realizes this and launches a patent war, Yezi Technology will have no patents in its hands and can only be slaughtered. The more you sell now, the more you will lose in the future. So they don’t attack you now, and they are happy to see your best-selling. When they feel that the time is ripe, they will start a patent war directly to share most of your profits, and there is no cost.

Nortel Networks is a very interesting company. They encourage engineers and technicians to apply for patents, so they have accumulated more than 8,000 patents covering dG, PI, voice, optics, Ethernet, the Internet, semiconductors and other very wide fields, but they themselves do not understand the value of these patents.

So much so that later, Nortel Networks went bankrupt and Google announced that it would acquire the patents in their hands for $900 million. But soon, Microsoft, Apple and other companies also formed an alliance to attack. In the end, both sides kept raising prices, and Google even increased from $900 million to 4.4 billion. However, in the end, the alliance between Microsoft and Apple completed the bid for $4.5 billion.

Ye Qiu knew this because before he traveled through time, Apple and Microsoft were fighting patent wars everywhere. Even though Google had already acquired Motorola at a high price, it was still passively beaten everywhere. Then Apple and Microsoft targeted mobile phone manufacturers such as Samsung and HTC, hoping to use the patent war to defeat competitors in one fell swoop.

It can be seen how amazing the value of these patents is.

Originally, in Ye Qiu's opinion, it would have cost a lot of money to acquire this huge patent of Nortel Networks, as well as their wireless and voice services and R&D departments, but according to the news given by Eliza Moon, this seems not to be the case. They still haven't realized the value of the patent yet.

Ye Qiu certainly didn't know that in fact, Nortel Network noticed that the value of patents was only realized when they reorganized their business after they declared bankruptcy, and then reduced more than 8,000 patents to more than 6,000 and auctioned publicly.

Now, the most valuable department of Nortel Networks has only priced around 2 billion, or even more than one billion, which shows that in their plan, wireless business is not the focus, their focus is on operators and enterprises.

But what is interesting is that Qualcomm, a leading mobile phone chip company, must pay them patents in the future. It can be seen that if the company's patent is obtained, it will be a huge supplement to Yezi Technology and will make Yezi Technology one of the largest patent database. Even if the mobile phone can't be sold in the future, it will be an astonishing number to charge patent fees.

Moreover, with sufficiently powerful patents, mobile phone manufacturers such as Samsung, and even some hardware manufacturers, including Qualcomm, must rely more closely around Yezi Technology. Otherwise, the patent will be a Damos sword above their heads, and this will completely lay the solid foundation for Yezi Technology.

Ye Qiu came from Europe specifically because Nortel Network wants to sell and Yezi Technology wants to buy, but there are some differences in the prices between the two sides. It is true that Nortel Network wants to sell its business, but they also want to raise the price, while Yezi Technology takes the opportunity to lower the price, but Ye Qiu must avoid a contradiction committed by Google in the past.

At that time, Google initiated the acquisition for 900 million yuan, but the two parties had some differences in prices. After that, the negotiations became more and more eye-catching, and even attracted the intervention of Apple and Microsoft. In the end, Nortel Networks realized the price of these patents, so they directly gave up negotiations and chose to open auctions. In the end, the price rose and climbed to US$4.5 billion.

Nowadays, Nortel Networks is mainly asking for a price of around 900 million US dollars, and Yezi Technology hopes to get it for 600 million. Moreover, Zafirowsky cannot sell all related patents to Yezi Technology. After all, some patents involve some of their other businesses, so it is impossible to sell them all, and in the end it is reduced to more than 7,000 items.

With the scope of negotiations, the price entanglement immediately began. Both sides showed their own negotiation skills. Ye Zi Technology is mainly based on Eliza Moon. Ye Qiu listened for the rest of the time except for the start. It was not until more than three hours passed that the negotiations between the two sides were a bit deadlocked, and he spoke again.

"In addition to the ownership of the patents listed by us and the relevant R&D departments and personnel of your company, I also hope to obtain the permanent right to use the other patents." Ye Qiu planned to sell it directly.

Eliza Moon and Shirley Sandberg, who were sitting next to him, were both surprised and raised the price by 100 million yuan. This is too anxious, right? After all, now time is beneficial to Yezi Technology.

They think this is right, but Ye Qiu has his own concern, that is, once other competitors realize the purpose of Yezi Technology, they will definitely give it snipers. Not to mention hundreds of millions, you will have more than one billion or tens of billions, otherwise you will always be controlled by others.

Sure enough, Mik Zafirowski is also a cunning leader. When he saw that Ye Qiu was not slowly grinding like other senior executives of Ye Zi Technology, he adopted a more anxious attitude of wanting to complete the acquisition as soon as possible. He immediately knew that there was a chance, but he didn't want to scare off this big customer, so he thought about it and suggested: "Mr. Ye Qiu, we can agree to your request, but the price is, we still ask for 900 million US dollars."

Shirley Sandberg knew Ye Qiu’s idea and the importance of taking over Nortel Networks to Yezi Technology. He just felt that if he continued to grind, it would be beneficial to the company and the price would not be so high, so he had to speak out.

But at this moment, Eliza Moon gently pulled her and shook her head. She knew Ye Qiu too well. This was a guy who could not get up early without profit. If it wasn't really necessary, he wouldn't have been so generous. The only explanation was that he felt that these patents and R&D personnel were indeed worth so much money.

After hearing this, Ye Qiu thought about it secretly for a while, raised his head, looked at Zafirowski again, and smiled, "Mr. Zafirowski, I came to Toronto with very strong sincerity, but this does not mean that I am a person who likes to bargain with others. On the contrary, people who are familiar with me know that I have no patience."

When he said this, Ye Qiu put his hands on the table and stared at Zafirowski. He felt it was necessary to put some pressure on the American, "Please believe that this is my last time and the last time our company has made a offer, 800 million US dollars, I hope you can think carefully about it again."

Even two or three years later, the patent war has completely begun and everyone realized the value of the patent, Google’s first offer was only 900 million yuan. Now Ye Qiu has given 800 million yuan, which is already very sincere.

But if we consider the future, we can obtain some core patents in chips, semiconductors, networks, voice services, etc., then this acquisition will be very valuable.

Of course, now Ye Qiu must show off his appearance. If you stick to the price, I can only withdraw from the negotiation.

Mik Zafirowski came to negotiate, which shows that he has received authorization and recognition from the board of directors. I believe they have already had a psychological price. Ye Qiu is sure that there is absolutely no 800 million. So after listening to Ye Qiu's words, Zafirowski looked at the other members of the negotiation team around him. After all, he nodded to Ye Qiu.

"I hope we can cooperate happily"

Ye Qiu reached out and held it with Zafirowski, "I hope so too."

When things got to this point, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. The negotiations that lasted for nearly four hours were finally over.

The entire negotiation process ended with Ye Qiu's final decision. Ye Zi Technology obtained more than 7,000 patents from Nortel Networks for 800 million US dollars, and also obtained a huge R&D team, but this does not mean that everything is over.

Three days after the negotiations ended, the two parties officially signed the acquisition agreement.

This news was like a heavy bomb, which immediately detonated in North America, and also surprised everyone by Yezi Technology's big move. Because Shirley Sandberg had already conducted public relations with the government through his own connections, the government did not make any trouble in this acquisition, but passed it directly.

At this point, Yezi Technology has completely leaped from a weak patent to a strong patent, especially in terms of smartphones, the Internet, etc. patent technologies have surpassed Google and Apple. Even Google's search, application framework and cloud networks may face patent litigation from Yezi Technology.

It was at this moment that Yezi Technology was truly a powerful person qualified to be among the top high-tech companies.

But the acquisition of Nortel Networks is just the beginning.
Chapter completed!