Janet's birthday saw the couple fly together to Miami for the celebration.
Taking advantage of the slump in the American real estate industry, Janet had purchased a six-hectare seaside plot in North Palm Beach, Miami, last year. The land sat within an upscale wealthy neighborhood, bordered by a golf course to the north, a private beach to the east, and a forest park to the south. It was prime real estate in every sense.
If not for the real estate downturn forcing developers to scale back their plans, and the buyer being Simon Westeros, whose name could bring considerable prestige to the area, this plot, large enough for seven or eight luxury mansions, would never have been sold as a single package.
Even so, the transaction price for the six-hectare plot alone reached ten million dollars.
Janet planned to invest twenty million dollars to create a seaside estate. Construction on the main villa had already begun last year, and the entire property was expected to be completed and ready for occupancy by the second half of next year.
As a stopgap, Janet had also bought a luxury mansion occupying one and a half acres right next to the estate, intending to fold the half-hectare property into the larger grounds once the main project finished.
News of Simon acquiring property in this exclusive neighborhood had spread, and in the single year since, surrounding home prices had climbed twenty percent.
Several mansions around the Westeros estate had become hot targets for buyers, with offers exceeding twice the area's average home value. Shrewd developers were treating the properties encircling the Westerlo estate as flagship assets, holding them tightly in hopes of selling to more wealthy elites and further elevating the neighborhood's appeal.
Shopping sprees, deep-sea fishing, parties. Janet filled the Friday-to-Sunday holiday schedule with a vibrant mix of activities.
The couple flew back to New York on Monday, and the date was already March 16.
Sophia Fache had not left yet.
After conducting a thorough investigation of CK in advance, Sophia presented her offer to CK on Saturday: fifty million dollars total, with forty million dollars used to buy fifty-five percent of the shares from existing shareholders and ten million dollars injected as a loan to ease the company's cash-flow strain.
In addition, Sophia promised that once the acquisition closed, Melisandre Company, and the entire Westeros system behind it, would supply channels, legal support, marketing resources, and more to help CK swiftly overcome its current troubles and grow stronger.
Apart from the family's internal power struggles, many of the issues CK faced now mirrored those Gucci had encountered at the start, and everyone could see how quickly Gucci had risen afterward.
Sophia's price was on the low side, but it was not unreasonable. It also left forty-five percent of the shares with the other CK shareholders, giving them room for future appreciation.
So even though she had allowed only twenty-four hours for consideration, after several rounds of attempted negotiation and bargaining went nowhere, CK founder Calvin Klein and the board finally accepted Melisandre Company's offer at the last minute.
The news that the acquisition agreement had been reached landed on the front pages of the New York Times that same Monday.
Following Gucci, Chateau Latour, and Van Cleef & Arpels, Melisandre Company had added another renowned luxury brand to its collection, moving one step closer to its goal of becoming a full-spectrum luxury group.
CK was not publicly traded.
Yet with the announcement, the dark cloud of bankruptcy that had hung over the company vanished. As media outlets across the board reported the story, CK product sales showed a clear uptick. The licensing partners who had been locked in disputes with CK also softened their stance. While they remained reluctant to loosen their grip on the licenses, they indicated they could make concessions on fees and other terms.
Simon did not head back to the West Coast this week. Instead, he stayed in New York with Janet to work on the next phase of Cersei Capital's development plan.
The first item on the agenda was Cersei Fund Management Company, the hedge fund.
After wrapping up last year's oil-market operations, Cersei Fund Management Company faced a clear need for transformation.
To shield the entire Westeros system from possible backlash, the fund would now steer clear of macro hedges that could affect an entire nation's economy.
In fact, right after the Berlin Wall came down, the fund's analysts had predicted a major reshuffle in the European monetary system.
In 1979, eight EEC nations, led by Germany and France, had created the European Monetary System to counter the dollar. The system established relatively fixed exchange rates based on each country's strength at the time. Britain, ever the outlier, had only announced its entry in 1990.
That was two years ago.
Yet after East and West Germany unified, Germany's economic power surged, making it unfair for the country to continue under the old exchange mechanism. To lure Britain in, the pound's rate had been visibly overvalued when it joined the system two years earlier, creating a severe imbalance that demanded a fresh arrangement.
Naturally, the Britain that had benefited most had no desire for any reshuffle, so external pressure would be required to force the change.
In the original timeline, Soros's Quantum Fund had attacked the pound in September 1992, ending with sharp devaluations of the pound, the Italian lira, the Spanish peseta, and other European currencies.
Soros personally pocketed one billion dollars from the raid and became a legend overnight. Quantum Fund and the other hedge funds involved all walked away with massive profits.
On the flip side, Britain exited the European Monetary System again after the crisis, the EEC took a heavy blow, and the dollar's dominance grew even more secure.
Leaving aside the deeper great-power maneuvering involved, if they chose to, Simon could now use his foresight advantage to position Cersei Capital ahead of the curve, quietly building short positions on the pound, the lira, and other currencies destined to collapse.
But the Westeros system was not as pure as Quantum Fund. Such a move might earn Cersei Capital a handsome sum, yet it would almost certainly draw hostility and targeting from European governments in the future, making every other line of business far more difficult.
Therefore, after reviewing the analysts' reports, Simon personally ordered Cersei Capital to stay out of the operation entirely, not a single cent allowed.
With Quantum Fund and the other major players already in the spotlight, even a modest profit for Cersei Capital would likely go unnoticed. There was simply no reason to risk getting dirt on their hands for a few leftover scraps.
Of course, the most important point was that Cersei Fund Management Company had a far more suitable target.
Tech stocks!
The new technology wave centered on the internet had already begun to surge ahead of schedule. Companies such as Microsoft, Intel, Oracle, Cisco, and America Online had seen their share prices climb rapidly over the past two years. Yet from what Simon remembered, current valuations were still nowhere near their eventual peak.
This moment was therefore the perfect time to go long on American tech stocks.
In the original timeline, the Tiger Fund, which had followed Quantum Fund in raking in huge gains during the 1997 Southeast Asia crisis, had later been forced into liquidation after betting against tech stocks. Billions in assets lost more than eighty percent in just two years. Hedge funds are a zero-sum game, and the Tiger Fund's collapse proved, in reverse, just how enormous the profits had been for those riding the long side of the tech market.
The craziest phase of the tech-stock boom might still be several years away, but judging by Nasdaq's overall trajectory, entering long positions now would still deliver very handsome returns.
More importantly, betting on tech stocks carried none of the intense political risk that came with macro currency plays. The Nasdaq tech sector's total market capitalization already stood in the trillions, more than enough room for Cersei Fund Management Company to operate freely.
Inside the Fifth Avenue apartment.
The date was March 18, Wednesday.
Simon and Janet returned home together after work at Cersei Capital's Midtown headquarters. Sophia arrived for a visit and stayed for dinner, where she brought up a few matters concerning CK.
Although the basic agreement was in place, the formal signing of the acquisition contract still required Melisandre Company to complete a more detailed operational and financial audit of CK to rule out any unexpected debts or legal risks. If everything proceeded smoothly, the deal could close as early as the beginning of next month.
"After the acquisition closes, CK's main focus will shift to three product lines: high-end men's and women's fashion, jeans, and underwear. High-end fashion will overlap somewhat with Gucci, but overall it will add welcome diversity to Melisandre Company's fashion portfolio. The jeans and underwear lines are far more critical. That was my real reason for buying CK, because those two categories are areas Gucci has never touched."
In the dining room, Simon listened to Sophia's explanation and asked, "At the last party, Klein mentioned that CK's perfume sales were doing well too?"
Sophia shook her head. "Perfume accounts for only about five percent of CK's total revenue, and it's difficult to compete with Dior, Chanel, and the rest. We won't drop the line, but we won't pour extra resources into it either. Our priority for the next few years remains building Gucci's fragrance business."
Janet, who always sat close beside Simon, asked, "What about the licensing situation?"
Sophia replied, "That's more complicated. In the eighties CK granted licenses across many categories, pajamas, swimwear, eyewear, socks, footwear, home goods, and so on. Pulling them all back will be very difficult, especially once Melisandre Company takes control. Still, most of those licenses expire within the next five years at the latest. My goal is to negotiate cancellations wherever possible. If we truly cannot reclaim them, we will at least enforce the highest possible quality standards to protect CK's brand image."
Simon added, "If the audit confirms no major problems, we can arrange some CK brand exposure at the Oscars at the end of the month."
"I've already started reaching out," Sophia nodded, then turned to Janet. "How are the LTD talks progressing?"
LTD was the usual shorthand for Limited Brands, parent company of Victoria's Secret.
Janet answered, "KKR and Blackstone have both shown interest lately, so a bidding war could break out. If the final prices climb too high, we'll simply have to walk away."
KKR was the private-equity firm behind the record-setting Reynolds Nabisco deal a few years earlier, and Blackstone needed no introduction. It was the former home of Lawrence Fink, who now ran BlackRock Asset Management.
Both were top-tier private-equity powerhouses on Wall Street.
Quiet negotiations had begun in February. After several rounds of talks failed to produce an agreement, the news inevitably leaked.
Although LTD insisted it had not been the source of the leak, the facts spoke for themselves.
The leak had already pushed LTD's stock price noticeably higher, lifting its market capitalization past one and a half billion dollars.
KKR and Blackstone had not yet submitted formal bids, but once they did, a bidding war would be unavoidable and the planned friendly acquisition would become impossible.
On the Cersei Capital side, Apollo Management's acquisition team had revised its proposal, raising the upper limit on the offer for LTD to two and a half billion dollars, an eight-hundred-million-dollar increase over the original seventeen-hundred-million-dollar target for a friendly deal.
Even with that adjustment, success was far from guaranteed against two watchful rivals.
Behind the scenes, however, the team had quietly accumulated 4.9 percent of LTD Group stock. Should the acquisition ultimately fail, cashing out those shares would still ensure Cersei Capital did not come away empty-handed.
In Simon's memory, LTD Group's peak market capitalization had once exceeded twenty billion dollars.
Even buying the company now for two and a half billion dollars, and holding for the typical five-year private-equity horizon, Simon was confident that with the U.S. economy's upward trajectory and LTD's own growth potential, the stock price would at least double within five years.
An average annual return of twenty percent over five years was hardly a poor outcome for private equity.
Simon returned to Los Angeles the next day, and time slipped into the latter half of March. The 64th Academy Awards, scheduled for March 30, were drawing near.
According to the voting schedule, judges for each Oscar category had already mailed in their ballots, and the results were essentially locked in.
Daenerys Entertainment's two major nominated films this year, The Piano and Thelma & Louise, were destined to be also-rans. The studio had also put little effort into campaigning for other nods, such as Ice World for best documentary feature or Raise the Red Lantern for best foreign-language film.
This was shaping up to be a notably quiet year for Daenerys Entertainment on the awards front.
Out of the studio's total twenty-two nominations, the only one with any real security was Holly Hunter's best-actress nod for The Piano.
Her standout performance in the film had made the nomination almost inevitable. Moreover, compared with the other contenders, Holly Hunter possessed deep connections throughout Hollywood. After all, the actress had once been Spielberg's girlfriend.
Her agency, ICM, had also poured substantial resources and influence into the campaign to bring her the little golden statue.
Easter 1992 fell on April 19.
A full month ahead of schedule, Daenerys Entertainment's flagship Easter release, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2, had entered its final promotional sprint.
Simon was reasonably pleased with the finished cut of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2. Still, in the original timeline the New Line sequels of the nineties had seen steadily declining box office, leaving him somewhat concerned about this installment's performance.
Had the sequel's budget not been a modest thirty million dollars, and had it not been necessary to coordinate with Blizzard Studio's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game series, Simon would have considered canceling the project altogether, just as he had done with Flying Over Childhood.
The decision not to rush a sequel immediately after the 1990 original was also rooted in the same concern.
At its core, although Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles enjoyed high name recognition, its characters skewed toward younger audiences. Once the initial novelty wore off for adult viewers, interest in sequels faded quickly. For children, even a PG-rated live-action version simply could not match the charm of the animated series.