Vuori

Vuori Oyj (previously Vuori Ventures and Vuori Oy) is a holding company established by Finnish-Norwegian-Canadian entrepeneur Kasperi Salovaara, headquartered in Hyvinkää, Finland. Its holdings include Vuori Forestry - the largest pulp and paper manufacturer by production quantity, Revolution Media Group - the third-largest film rights owner and distributor by library, and Silvertop Unibrew.

History
Salovaara became interested in investment at an early age, and dabbled into business through the formation of Silvertop Brewery (which soon would evolve into Silvertop Unibrew) and Zoop Music Entertainment, even assisting Robert Stainton at forming TransNordic (which became Vuori Forestry).

After the success in establishing operations of Styhon Battersea, helping at the foundation of Gearbox Films, and becoming one of the richest billionaires, he decided to gain citizenship in Norway and Canada. He also assigned people to take care of his parts in various companies, including his childhood best friend Martin Glass, who became the Head of Gearbox Films's financing department.

The new holding company seperate from Styhon Battersea was soon named after the word "vuori" (Finnish for "mountain"), as Salovaara thought to form it as his very own, similar to OWL Ventures, as in "his own mountain to conquer". The name also is attributed to his Nordic origins.

As OWL Ventures grew larger in size and revenue, Oliver Watson arranged, and  to merge into a new Vuori division, which soon became Horizon Capital (mainly known as Horizon). After much debate and controversy, OWL Ventures and Vuori went public and BH/Vanguard's shareholders got shares in both companies to make up for the acquisitions.

After foundation, Horizon Capital acquired Lantern Capital and absorbed the company, while selling Lantern Entertainment to The Eclipse Group. Vuori also sold Mr X, Mill and Trace VFX to The Eclipse Group around the same time.

At the end of 2020, Salovaara, Lee Soo-man and Bang Si-hyuk announced to merge Big Hit and SM Entertainment into Vuori SM, a new division of Vuori, with around 10% being owned by the National Pension Service in South Korea. This was met with some controversy, especially from Oliver Watson and The Eclipse Group, who mentioned that Salovaara failed to mention about the formation to them.

On December 31, 2020, Oliver Watson, an executive at the company, bought out 20% in B and A stocks (latter are stocks with voting interest). In February 2021, Oliver's company OWL Ventures received a 50% stake in both Discovery and Vuori Media.

Merger with Vivendi
During OWL Ventures's IPO, Vuori and Vivendi agreed on a merger, which would see Vuori taking on Universal Music Group, Gameloft and Canal+ Group, as well as other minor assets. The merger is set to finish at the same time as the merger with Styhon Battersea, and Vivendi's operations will stay in France, until the construction of Vuorensuu is finished.

During the merger, Vuori sold Havas Group to the Eclipse Group's advertising and branding division Axiom. Vuori also sold Editis and Dailymotion to OWL Ventures. Gameloft was also sold to OWL Ventures with the exception of studios in Montreal, Bucharest/Cluj, Barcelona and Tokyo, and the Modern Combat, Asphalt and Nights franchises, which went to The Eclipse Group. In return of studios in Indonesia, Vietnam and Ukraine, Krafton Pearl Abyss sold PUBG Corporation and Jam City's Burbank studio, while Vuori/Styhon Battersea sold off all of its golf-related assets, and Virgin Media Sport - both the production unit and TV channel - in Ireland.

StudioCanal, after getting acquired by Vuori, sold 50% ownership stake in the Carolco Pictures and De Laurentiis Entertainment Group film libraries to MGM Entertainment. This also resulted in Vuori getting a 25% stake in MGM Entertainment, while Illustrious received a 10% stake in StudioCanal.

Merger with Styhon Battersea
Shortly before the Vivendi merger announcement, Vuori announced its merger with Styhon Battersea, with Vuori being the surviving company. This was started due to Oliver Watson's dwindling presence in managing Styhon Battersea, which left Kasperi Salovaara disappointed, and led to them discussing the two companies's merger, in order to relieve Watson of some duties.

In October 2020, Styhon Battersea Digital Entertainment sold its podcast/audiobook division Bracket Media to Illustrious, in exchange of 50% in Newsfeed Media, which was sold to Vuori's Discovery division.

Corporate management
Kasperi Salovaara is both the founder and the CEO of Vuori. Oliver Watson of OWL Ventures has an executive position in the company as well. They both operate the company and Styhon Battersea out of OWL Ventures's offices in Toronto, as well as Vuori's headquarters in Hyvinkää.

Research and development
Vuori, in collaboration with Horizon Capital and Amber (division of OWL Ventures), spend a total of 50 billion dollars on research and development. These include package design, aerodynamics, artificial intelligence, big data and furniture design. Some, including furniture design, are to benefit work environments within the Vuori group of companies.

Equal pay
Salovaara commented on Twitter about his rumored payroll: "I usually gain a lot working at [Oliver Watson's] kagillion-dollar company, so to kinda balance that off, I split my proposed payroll as CEO of Vuori with every other employee. They're all as important as I am. The janitor, [Martin Glass], everyone. Everyone's salary is equal there. They have as much responsibility as I do."

Shareholders
Vuori's A stocks are held by Kasperi Salovaara, but following Vuori's own IPO on B stock, they managed to get investment from treasuries, banks, foreign investors, families and government investments (e.g. Temasek Holdings, NEC, Investor AB, the Dolan, Berlusconi and Anschutz families, ELAN Group, UK Government Investments and BNP Paribas) as well as former shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway, BlackRock, Crown plc and Styhon Battersea, and former customers of BlackRock and the Vanguard Group. Most also invested in OWL Ventures, which is appropriately related to Watson and Salovaara's partnership.

Hyvinkää
Vuori is currently located in Hyvinkää, Finland, near the city center in a fully-bought apartment complex. It also houses OWL Ventures's European operations.

Vuorensuu
Codenamed as "Vuorensuu", Vuori began scouting for new locations for its new headquarters. It would host a full-fledged building for the Vuori Academy program, a location, a new Silvertop brewery, a library, film studios, a pharmacy, a movie theater, a green wall, a private jet airport to transport foreign employees, a man-made river that would provide hydroelectricity, solar panels, wind turbines, as well as apartment complexes for its employees.

It will house Vuori, as well as new headquarters for Silvertop Unibrew, Crown, ZME and Vuori Forestry. It will also serve as a playground for urban development efforts, such as autonomous cars and alternate traffic lights meant to help colorblind people.

Vuori will be working on the project in collaboration with numerous companies, such as Vuori Forestry for landscaping and "urban forestation", a consortium of,  and for wind and solar energy,  for advertising-oriented furniture, Silvertop Unibrew for the brewery,  and  with  for their retail locations, OWL Health for pharmacy services,  for in-campus monorail travel system, and  and  for the movie theater.

Areas
Vuorensuu will be split into multiple areas:
 * Sports area will be modeled after Olympic villages as well as standards for hosts of big sporting events, in order to house an annual sports competition between Vuori employees, and a bi-annual sports competition with employees of all Vuori and OWL Ventures divisions. Once construction is completed, it will start off with a special Goodwill Games event, before a two-year hiatus dedicated to planning the first Vuorensuu Games.

The Vuorensuu Companies
For this project, many subsidiaries were founded to take care of certain parts of the new location.


 * Helen, Hyötytuuli, Väre and Vuori founded Vuorien Energia Oy (Energy of the Mountains) to sell extra energy. It's also researching ways to produce and use 100% renewable energy with Vuori Forestry.


 * Vuori gathered an international team for planning and construction, which include, , , ,  and . They all cooperate under their joint venture Vuorensuun Rakennus Oy.


 * For residential areas, they were to be rented out to another LLC, Vuorensuun Asunnot Oy, run by Vuori, and Access Comfort Group, which took care of renting out apartments. They decided to experiment with  rentals for 15% of the apartments, once construction has been completed.
 * The Vuorensuu science center, which will also house some of Vuori's R&D efforts, will be run in cooperation with, and , under Vuorensuun Tiedekeskus Oy.
 * Vuorensuun Ammattiopiskelu Oy runs the Vuori Academy program in Vuorensuu, as well as begins development on both a vocational college and an university of applied sciences, to streamline education within the area, with studies ranging from artifical intelligence, to life sciences and game design.
 * Vuori Ice Arena will be a multi-functional ice arena meant for events like ice hockey and skating. It will be in the "sports area".
 * Vuorensuun Yhteisverkko Oy is a joint venture between, Crown Cellular, , and , to provide 5G internet and related services to the area, as well as participate in the development of Vuorensuu as a.

Revolution Media Group
Revolution Media Group, founded by Howard and Chance Styhon and bought by Salovaara before the founding of Vuori, is one of the largest international sales and film distribution companies by library and availability. They're also a leading producer of children's entertainment and factual content worldwide. They distribute Brittania Pictures's movies internationally, while Brittania distributes their films in Portugal and the UK.

In January 2020, they acquired distribution offices of Brittania Pictures in Africa (including South Africa and Egypt), Asia (including Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Singapore, Japan, Australia, Russia and Hong Kong) and Latin America (including Brazil). The deal also included Afpak Films - its distribution arm in the Middle East - and majority-owned CX7 Entertainment - which was a spin-off of Brittania Pictures's distribution offices in Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Moldovia, Ukraine and ex-Yugoslavia countries.

They also acquired Brittania Pictures's distribution offices in Italy, Switzerland, Germany and Ireland; the first two were closed shortly afterwards, with the latter two being merged into its own Fishfilm GmbH and newly-acquired Element Pictures respectively. They closed Brittania Pictures Japan, in favor of establishing a distribution deal with Longride; offices in Australia were merged into Australian Filmgroup, though select films are set to be co-distributed by Roadshow Films.

They also acquired Metropolitan Filmexport and Davis Films from the Hadida brothers, and Brittania Pictures France, and moved the two companies under Cinéa. Brittania France's distribution deals outside of Brittania, and "non-film import operations" of Metropolitan, will move to Cinéa. Brittania Pictures's Belgium and Luxembourg operations were merged into Cinéa Belux, which also moved under Cinéa.

In November, they acquired Madman Entertainment, PalmStar Media, Studio 100, FilmNation Entertainment, Scholastic, WildBrain, mm2 Entertainment, Boat Rocker Media, the Asia Pacific and South American operations of Fremantle and ELAN Group's media and entertainment divisions. Gulf Film became part of Afpak Motion Pictures, while ELAN Media became part of Viridian Group. They also acquired the pre-2016 DreamWorks Pictures libraries from Paramount Pictures and The Walt Disney Studios for €700 million. Revolution Studios will manage the DreamWorks library and owns its copyrights, while Amblin Partners has the "free reign over [the past films]".

Production and distribution deals

 * Neon Society Entertainment (2022-present)
 * The Nothing Company (2019-2022)
 * Easykey (2019-2022)
 * Vortex Drift (2020-present)
 * Jamie Shertick Productions (2019-2020)
 * Sandford Productions (2019-2020)

Distributed by Revolution Media Group

 * Brittania Pictures (2020-present)
 * EuropaCorp (2020-present)
 * Studio Ghibli (2020-present)
 * A24 Films (2021-present)

A24's films are distributed only in non-English-speaking markets and within all of the Oceanian territories, especially Australia and New Zealand.

Brittania Pictures's films will be distributed by Revolution outside Canada, United States, Portugal and the UK; where, within the latter two countries, Brittania distributes Revolution films instead.

International distribution of Revolution's films

 * Columbia Pictures (the Philippines, 2020-present)
 * NC Entertainment (South Korea, 2020-present)
 * Illustrious Film Distributors (Japan, Nordic countries (including Iceland), Italy, 2020-present) - co-distribution deal
 * Brittania Pictures (UK, Spain and Portugal, 2021-present)

Gurgel Motors
Gurgel Motors is the automotive division of Vuori, which was formed to plan and manufacture new electric vehicles under the revived brand, which is a famous Brazilian brand. Salovaara founded the division with Gearbox Films co-founder Edward R. Benjamin after they both found out about each other's passion for cars. (Salovaara's passion was more technical, while Benjamin's was more retro.)

In order to start work on their first car since the foundation, Gurgel BR1, they managed to acquire some patents, including the Activa suspension system (electronically controlled hydropneumatic suspension combined with an active anti-roll bar) as well as did R&D work for graphite and fiber-metal laminates. They intend on sticking with a rounded version of the famous Gurgel BR-800 car design, though will tweak it slightly based on aerodynamics research.

Though Tesla and the new Gurgel are essentially rivals, Salovaara is friends with the former's figurehead Elon Musk, and they usually interact through Twitter. While Salovaara has regarded Musk as "sometimes a hothead ready to explode, almost like [himself]", confirmed by arguments spawn out of some interactions on the platform, he still affirms that he is "one of the greatest friends [he's] ever had", next to Watson, Benjamin and Glass. Their friendship allowed Gurgel and Tesla to collaborate on development of new car parts and new features to their OS, as well as resulted in Gurgel's involvement in autonomous car development.

They have dual headquarters in Hyvinkää (within Vuori's offices) and Sao Paulo (which also serves as their factory).

Horizon
Horizon is the asset management and investment advisory division of Vuori, created through the merger of Vuori's asset management and stakeholding side with, and , under Oliver Watson's supervision and funding.

The merger caused controversy with shareholders in both companies, but soon resulted in amicablity, as the shareholders in Vanguard and Berkshire Hathaway eventually agreed to own 45% of Horizon, until OWL Ventures goes public, which it did do immediately after the merger. The established funds became 50% owned by customers as well, with the other half being owned by Kasperi Salovaara. At first, Salovaara was against the idea, mentioning how it's "cruel and, not to mention, buttfucc [sic] insane" to steal people's funds. However, Watson, Salovaara and Warren Buffett soon planned out a strategy that would satisfy both sides of the merger.

Horizon's holdings include around 33.3% of Kraft Heinz, 22% of The Coca-Cola Company, ~21% of Apple, 19% of Alphabet, 15% of Twitter, 13% of Intel, 12.6% of Comcast, 12.3% of Facebook, 11.5% of Microsoft, 10% of Amazon, ~5.7% of T-Mobile US, 5% of Deutsche Bank and 3% of BT Group.

Horizon subdivisions

 * Horizon Solutions - risk management and analytics
 * - inherited from BlackRock acquisition, integrated with ETFs from Vanguard owned by customers who wanted to continue using Vanguard/Horizon's services

Crown


Crown Cellular is the telecommunications division of Vuori, formed in August 27, 2020 as a public holding company, to hold telecommunications assets sold by Styhon Battersea to prevent antitrust violations. It manages the O2 brand in Europe and Asia, and holds shares in Orange Africa and O2 Latin America.

Before merger into Vuori, the majority stake in the company is held by Salovaara, who is also the founder of the company.

Krafton Pearl Abyss
Krafton Pearl Abyss is one of the largest gaming companies, next to Tencent, MGM Interactive and EA. They are one of the largest game publishers in the MMO, strategy and wargame genres. They have development studios around the world, with their mobile division NC Plarium residing in Israel, their publishing division En Masse residing in Venice Beach, and Keywords Studios residing in Dublin.

Their portfolio includes games and franchises such as Black Desert Online, Sniper Elite, World of Tanks/World of War, War Thunder, Raid: Shadow Legends, Eve Online and Guild Wars 2; and the portfolio is a huge part of their successes in Europe, the Americas and Asia-Pacific. They are also helping build the eSports scene within Africa.

They also hold around 12% of stakes in ​SK Group and minority stakes in Korean companies ​KT Corporation​ and Naver Corporation. In December 2020, they acquired all of Tencent's stakes, and half of CJ Group's stakes, in ​Netmarble​, resulting in the ownership of a 35.49% stake, making KPA the largest shareholder. That same month, they also acquired a 20% stake in CJ E&M, buying out shares owned by minor investors, mostly foreign investors.

During the Styhon Battersea-Vuori merger, KPA's parent company Styhon Games merged itself into the company, making KPA the gaming division of Vuori.

Vuori SM
Vuori SM is another division of Vuori meant to expand their presence in Asia, this time in South Korea. It was formed out of a mutual merger between, with its subsidiaries and , and  (which Vuori had a stake in). They're responsible for managing such groups as, and.

Their holdings include:
 * SM USA
 * SM Brand Development - formed out of a merger between beNX, SM Life Design Group, SM F&B Development, Dear U Co Ltd and SM Brand Marketing
 * SUM, a shop that gives people the chance to experience the lifestyles of celebrities
 * SUM MARKET, which realizes the concept of CSV (Creating Shared Value) by launching products through collaboration with outstanding small and medium-sized enterprises
 * SUM CAFÉ, which is a new type of space for F&B
 * ‘everysing' - karaoke application in Korea
 * the interest based community service ‘Lysn’
 * “Bubble“ service which artists and fans can communicate via messenger, and artists’ handwritten letter service for fans
 * ‘Podo-Namu’, a restaurant that offers exquisite home-style Korean cuisine in an elegant atmosphere in Nishi-Azabu, Japan
 * ‘e-Table’, a private restaurant to enjoy wine, sake, and makgeolli with Korean dishes prepared with a modern touch, in Sinsa-dong
 * ‘SMT SEOUL’, a multiplex restaurant in Cheongdam-dong in January 2016, expanded to America, Japan, China, and Asia since around 2016
 * Weverse
 * Weverse Shop
 * SMTOWN Planner
 * SM Japan
 * SM True - Thailand
 * SM Live Entertainment - formerly Dream Maker Entertainment
 * MILLION MARKET
 * Galaxia SM - sports event management and production
 * KeyEast
 * ESteem
 * Mystic Story
 * Label SJ
 * Label V
 * ScreaM Records
 * All I Know Music (AIKM)
 * SM Entertainment Classic Label
 * SM Entertainment Game Music Label - formerly Superb
 * BELIFT (jointly managed by CJ E & M)
 * BELIFT (jointly managed by CJ E & M)

Joint ventures and stakes
Through its merger with Vivendi, Vuori inherited a 90% stake in. Vuori also holds a 50% stake in Salovaara Watson, and a 50% stake in, the latter which was acquired from AITC around the time Styhon Battersea started merger into Vuori.


 * China Gurgel Motos Corporation - a 50/50 joint stock partnership with the Chinese government (through state-owned companies BAIC Motor, SAIC Motor, FAW Group, Dongfeng Motors and Changan Automobile) to distribute Gurgel's cars in China, as well as manufacture additional cars under the Gurgel brand.