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.

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.

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 the Vanguard Group. Most also invested in OWL Ventures, which is appropriately related to Watson and Salovaara's partnership.

Silvertop Unibrew
Silvertop Unibrew (Silvertop United Breweries NV) is the beverages division of Vuori, with legal headquarters in Amsterdam and operational headquarters in. While currently not the #1 largest, they are one of the largest brewing and soft drinks companies by brand portfolio and breweries.

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 Lumiere Film & Television, Paravision International, Carolco Pictures and Pueblo Film Licensing libraries from StudioCanal for €4.5 billion, as well as their holdings on the international home video rights to the Miramax library, and 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]". Through these acquisitions, they also received trademarks of and all film rights to the library of Carolco Pictures.

Distributed by Revolution Media Group
Vertical Entertainment and AMBI Group's films are to be distributed outside North America and Europe, while films by Nu Image, A24, Sierra/Affinity, Highland Film Group and Neon are distributed only in non-English-speaking markets (with a slight exception on A24's films which will also be distributed within all of the Oceania territories, especially Australia and New Zealand).

Amblin Partners films would be covered by Revolution Media Group in areas and countries where MGM (formerly eOne) or Universal Pictures don't have distribution operations. Styhon acquired all international sales rights to all Studio Ghibli works from Wild Bunch AG and StudioCanal in November 2020.

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)
 * CJ Entertainment (South Korea, 2020-present)
 * Longride (Japan, 2020-present)
 * Sam Film (Iceland, 2020-present)
 * Monolith Films (Poland, 2020-present)
 * Brittania Pictures (UK, Spain and Portugal, 2021-present)
 * Svensk Filmindustri (Nordic countries, 2021-present) - co-distribution deal
 * Eagle Pictures (Italy, 2021-present) - co-distribution deal

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).

Vuori Forestry
Vuori Forestry is the division specializing in timber, pulp and paper products as well as research and development of alternative solutions to palm oil, and forest preservation.

It started business as another venture by Salovaara, co-founded with Robert Stainton and Martin Glass, called TransNordic, headquartered in Hyvinkää, which would soon house its future parent company Vuori also. TransNordic was formed out of Stainton's acquisitions of 's Pulp And Energy and Paper businesses,, and , as well as of  and. It was listed on the Johannesburg, London and Oslo Stock Exchanges and Nasdaq Nordic until its integration into Vuori.

It's main factories are located in Sundsvall, Flintshire and Kaukas.

Their palm oil alternative development is done in co-operation with Greenpeace, food research institutes, and food companies such as Unilever and Danone Group, and the original idea for it spawned out of Salovaara's personal dislike for "corrupt deforsting companies" such as  and.

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, 12.6% of Comcast, 12.3% of Facebook, 11.5% of Microsoft, 10% of Amazon, 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 plc is a British public holding company formed in August 27, 2020, to hold telecommunications assets sold by Styhon Battersea to prevent antitrust violations. It manages the O2 brand in Europe and Latin America. Majority stake in the company is held by Salovaara, who is also the founder of the company, through Vuori.

Technicolor


Technicolor is the creative industries division of Vuori, acquired as Technicolor SA around the time they filed for bankruptcy. They own the and  trademarks, which get licensed to numerous companies.


 * Technicolor India
 * Method Technicolor Digital Cinema - joint venture with Styhon Battersea; formerly called Deluxe Technicolor Digital Cinema
 * Method Technicolor Digital Cinema - joint venture with Styhon Battersea; formerly called Deluxe Technicolor Digital Cinema
 * Method Technicolor Digital Cinema - joint venture with Styhon Battersea; formerly called Deluxe Technicolor Digital Cinema
 * Method Technicolor Digital Cinema - joint venture with Styhon Battersea; formerly called Deluxe Technicolor Digital Cinema

Joint ventures and stakes
Gurgel Motors established China Gurgel Motors 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.

Vuori holds an 69% stake in Styhon Battersea (its subsidiary Horizon Capital holds 15%) and a 50% stake in, acquired from AITC around the time Styhon Battersea started merger into Vuori.