每年夏天，在传媒业并购方面颇有建树的投资银行 Allen & Co会在著名胜地太阳谷举办一次邀请制的聚会。获邀者多为科技、媒体、投资巨头，聚会谢绝媒体采访，记者们只能在外围观望。可以想象，这样神秘的闭门聚会，总会有一些神秘的话题。不少媒体并购案在这里酝酿。比如，华盛顿邮报的交易，贝佐斯和格雷厄姆就是在这里谈妥的。Instagram、Whatapps的并购，都在这里达成默契。
此外，AOL/Verizon、Comcast/NBC Universal、Disney/ABC之间的并购，也都是在这里起的头。
纽约时报的CEO，总是躲不开与Facebook 和 Apple 交易的话题。大家都知道，这是性命交关的问题。他的名言〖参与那个游戏，有风险（risk），是的。但是，“置身那个派对之外，有危险（danger）。” 〗
贝佐斯又来了
马克·扎克伯格
马克·扎克伯格身后的这个女强人也来了，今年，他们打算买什么？
David Wehner, CFO of Facebook，他带钱来了吗
扎克伯格一直想买但一直被婉拒的这个小帅哥也来了，
纽约邮报发自太阳谷的这则报道有点惊悚。Facebook会买下Twitter 吗？Facebook和Twitter？捕风捉影，还是无风不起浪？要真有那么回事，其他人还怎么玩？
Twitter CEO 临时工 迪克·多西（左）在玩酷
这张更酷
Twitter 刚下台的CEO还是来了，撤销邀请可不大礼貌
马斯克是第一次参加“太阳谷夏令营”。他带来的话题，让聆听的媒体巨头们摸不着头脑。马斯克的电动车和太空飞船不会是下一个互联网入口或者平台吧 ？关于马斯克的另一个话题是，他带夫人同行。这位夫人，从2010年起，和他离了两次婚，嗯，一共结了三次，好象没有数错。这两个人中，究竟哪一个比较作？
巴菲特是报纸爱好者，不过，他近年买的众多地方报纸，都套在手里了
丹·格雷厄姆卖了华盛顿邮报，仍是电视媒体大亨
John Donahoe , President and CEO of eBay
Reid Hoffman (L), co-founder of LinkedIn, Bing Gordon, former Chief Creative Officer of Electronic Arts.
AOL的CEO，去年在这里，他找到了AOL的买主，今年来太阳谷之前，他把自己和AOL 一起卖了
迪斯尼的CEO夫妇
这个是熟脸孔，哪儿都 少不了他
老默多克和他的大儿子
杰姆斯·默多克，老默多克的接班人
三个默多克
波士顿红袜队老板，也是波士顿环球报老板
记者现场拍到的唯一一张中国面孔，雅虎的杨致远。Allen & Co 没请马云、马化腾，还是两马不给面子？
别小看这位不那么起眼的大姐。她是YouTube的，掌门人。
Mary Teresa Barra, CEO of General Motors 和她的丈夫，她来采购汽车零部件？
Eric Paul Lefkofsky, co-founder and CEO of Groupon
右边这位，很多人可能用过他的电脑，Dell
至于这位老太太，胸牌上写得明白。谷歌一下吧。年轻时可是女神，上年纪了，Allen & Co 仍然不敢拉下她。
大人物都坐这些小飞机来的，小人物，坐的则是大飞机
BI的一个背景报道
The summer camp for billionaires, which kicks off in Sun Valley today, has yielded some blockbuster deals
ALEXEI ORESKOVIC Jul. 7, 2015, 9:44 AM
Apple CEO Tim Cook and Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao at Sun Valley in 2013
The so-called summer camp for billionaires kicks off this week, as tech and entertainment industry moguls convene in Sun Valley, Idaho for the annual Allen & Co conference.
Among those invited to this year’s gathering are Apple CEO Tim Cook, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk,according to Variety.Media moguls such as Barry Diller, Rupert Murdoch and John Malone are all regular attendees.
The event features several days of talks about business and the economy, all of which are off-limits to the press, as well as extra-curricular activities such as rafting and golf.
But the real action comes in the meetings, power lunches, and general chit-chat the moguls engage in between the formal sessions, which often provide the foundation to mega deals. These deals usually don’t materialize until weeks or months later, which is why an army of reporters armed with telephoto-lenses stalk the area, diligently snapping pics of what could be the next blockbuster deal.
Often the photos prove nothing more than the fact that Executive A had lunch with Executive B. But with so many high-powered execs in attendance (not to mention the fact that the event is hosted by an investment bank eager to broker big corporate marriages that pay big fees), it’s inevitable that some of these encounters lead to deals.
Here’s a recap of some of the biggest deals that have been hatched at the conference over the years.
AOL/Verizon
AOL CEO Tim Armstrong at Sun Valley in 2014
The seeds to one of 2015’s most high-profile acquisitions were planted in July 2014 in Sun Valley.
It was there that AOL CEO Tim Armstrong and Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam had lunch together and started talking about “the way the world was going.”
Those discussions progressed over the fall, culminating with the May announcement that AOL was selling to Verizon for $4.4 million. The combination could help telecommunications giant Verizon become a bigger player in mobile and video advertising.
As for AOL, hopefully this deal will turn out better than the last big combination it sketched out at Sun Valley: the ill-fated 1999 merger with Time Warner.
Comcast/NBC Universal
Comcast's Brian Roberts and Comcast execs at Sun Valley in 2010
Cable company Comcast morphed into a media goliath in 2011 when it acquired a majority stake in entertainment company NBC Universal.
The deal involved months of negotiations but a key moment occurred during a secret meeting at a condo near the ninth hole of a Sun Valley golf course in 2009.According to a report in the New York Times, Jeff Immelt, the CEO of GE (which owned NBC at the time), met with Comcast COO Steve Burke and Comcast’s 89-year-old founder Ralph Roberts.
Immelt had already met with Roberts' son Brian, who was the CEO of Comcast, but he wanted to hear from the elder Roberts as well. The secret rendezvous required that Immelt dodge not only the gaggle of reporters at the event, but even his own colleague, NBC CEO Jeff Zucker, who was also at the conference but was not privy to the deal talks.
Jeff Bezos/Washington Post
Jeff Bezos and Washington Post Chairman Donald Graham
In August 2013, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos surprised the world by announcing that he had acquired the Washington Post for $250 million.
One month earlier, Bezos had two three-hour meetings with Post Chairman Donald Graham at Sun Valley,according to the Wall Street Journal.
The meetings were not completely spontaneous. Allen & Co, the boutique investment bank which hosts the conference, had been hired by Graham to broker a deal and had reached out to Bezos months earlier. But the casual atmosphere of Sun Valley may have helped things go smoothly. “I named a price and Jeff agreed to pay it,”Graham later told Reuters.
Disney/ABC
Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner at Sun Valley in 2011
One of the largest deals ever when it was announced in 1995, Disney’s $19 billion acquisition of Capital Cities/ABC created a media and entertainment powerhouse and put Sun Valley on the map as the destination for headline-grabbing acquisitions.
The talks began when Disney’s then-CEO Michael Eisner bumped into investor Warren Buffett at the conference, according to the New York Times. Eisner asked Buffett’s opinion about whether Disney and ABC should “do something together.” Buffett apparently liked the idea and suggested that Eisner talk to Capital Cities/ABC Chairman Thomas Murphy. The three then had a brief chat which set the ball rolling for serious deal talks that took place in the weeks ahead.
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