Читать книгу Applied Mergers and Acquisitions - Robert F. Bruner - Страница 49

On June 12, 1984, Disney’s chief executive officer announced an agreement to buy Steinberg’s shares for $77.45 per share, yielding a 78 percent annualized return on investment to him. On that day, Disney shares closed at $49.00, down $5.25, or 9.7 percent, from the previous close. Two days later, the first of many shareholder lawsuits protesting the payment was filed.

Then, on July 17, Irwin Jacobs, another raider, mounted a hostile bid for Disney. The Bass family, wealthy investors who had gained a significant stake in Disney as a result of an earlier transaction with Disney, undertook a series of actions to defuse Jacobs. First, the Bass group purchased large blocks of stock from Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky, and then purchased Jacobs’ shares, in effect paying a second round of greenmail. With Jacobs’ departure, the directors could focus their attention on underlying problems at the company. Apparently sensing that the two raids indicated fundamental problems in management, the board of directors fired Ronald Miller as CEO; other senior managers soon left the company as well. A major management housecleaning took place following the raids.

More importantly, the focus of the firm’s strategy shifted from real property back to creative capital with the hiring of the new chief executive officer, Michael Eisner, from Paramount. While campaigning for the CEO position, Eisner is reported to have said to Sid Bass, “It’s going to take a creative person to run this company. Look at the history of American companies. They have always gotten into trouble when the creative people are replaced by the managers. Walt Disney Productions can’t allow that to happen to it.”²¹

Eisner’s strategy of returning to the creative core of the company was successful. For the next 10 years, Disney showed a ninefold increase in net income. The compound annual growth in stock price from June 1984 to May 1993 was 34 percent.