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.

Merger with Vivendi
During OWL Ventures's IPO, Vuori and Vivendi agreed on a merger, which would see Vuori taking on Universal Music Group, Havas, 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.

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.

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.

Vuori Academy
Vuori runs online workshops in collaboration with universities of applied sciences and vocational/community colleges.

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.

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. They also 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, 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.

Vuori Media
Vuori Media (legally known as TV3 Media Group AS) is the European broadcasting division of Vuori, which owns and manages television and radio channels in Denmark, Sweden and Norway. It was formed out of Styhon Battersea's non-Discovery branded Nordic/French broadcasting assets, and serves as a de facto successor to, Discovery Networks Nordic (in Norway, Sweden and Denmark) and Groupe M6.

It is headquartered in Oslo, Norway, and will move offices when Vuorensuu's construction is finished. It also has offices in London and Paris, the former where they broadcast some channels to Denmark.

France
In France, they operate M6 (with 6ter and W9) along with music video channels (under the MCM branding). They also operate a French version of, under license from. Vuori Media France's children's television division Canal J Group operates the following:
 * M6
 * 6ter
 * W9
 * MCM
 * MCM Hits - formerly M6 Music
 * MCM Retro - formerly RFM TV/MCM Pop
 * MCM Top
 * O Shopping - formerly Best of Shopping
 * Canal J
 * Tiji
 * Gulli
 * La Chaîne du Père Noël - available during Christmas time

Nordics
They also own radio channels in Norway (, P4 Radio Hele Norge, P5 Hits, P6 Rock, P7 Klem, P8 Pop, P9 Retro and P10 Country) and Sweden (Bandit Rock (Uppsala/Stockholm), Power Hit Radio (Stockholm), Rix FM and Star FM). Their internet assets include all websites associated with their television and radio channels, and the Norwegian netradio P11 Bandit with the Swedish online music service I LIKE RADIO.

Other countries
MCM also has channels in Spain (formerly Sol Música) and Spanish-speaking Latin America (formerly Movistar Musica).

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

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, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, 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.

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.