Word: eisner
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...Michael Eisner is happy doing things. He just has to be doing everything. In 1989, during the televised extravaganza that launched the Disney-MGM Studio theme park in Florida, Eisner noticed that a spangle from the costume of one of the 1,200 dancers had fallen on the red carpet. He waited till the cameras had passed, then darted out, picked up the spangle and put it in his tuxedo pocket. At Disney, neatness counts. So, for the chairman and ceo, does a twin obsession for the big picture and the smallest, shiniest detail...
Last week Eisner was a very happy man. A fortnight after springing word of the Walt Disney Co.'s $19 billion acquisition of Capital Cities/ABC, he announced that Michael Ovitz had agreed to leave his post as mega-boss of Creative Artists Agency and join the Mouse conglomerate as president, effective Oct. 1. In June, Ovitz, a.k.a. Hollywood's Most Powerful Man, had passed up a $250 million offer to run MCA. So the news that he would be Eisner's-or anyone's-No. 2 left observers giddy with admiration. "Disney now is not only the world's biggest...
What made last week's deal so savory for Eisner was the chance it provided to silence the Furies. Eisner is a deeply competitive man, routinely described as one of the most ruthlessly ambitious in a town not known for the modesty of its moguls. In one grand gesture he erased much of the conventional wisdom about his style and vision: the heart surgery that was supposed to have mellowed him turns out to have made him even tougher; the egomaniac who was accused of driving away anyone talented enough to threaten his regime embraces Cap Cities' formidable president, Robert...
Wall Street whistled while it worked, gobbling up shares of both companies, and by the end of the week, their combined value topped $48 billion. Grumpy analysts who had hounded Eisner for his caution and his lack of global vision were now swooning about so neat a fit between "content" and "distribution." From Eisner's enemies came praise through clenched teeth; it would be hard to avoid doing business with the man now that he presided over so vast an empire. "If you had asked me Sunday night as I went to bed, 'Is Eisner paying $19 billion...
...contrarians caution that the major players may have the wrong idea--that someone like Malone, by striking deals with everyone, is positioning himself better than is Michael Eisner, who for better or worse will now be tethered to ABC's network. "The risk is that some dumb deals will happen just because people are feeling they'd better buy something," says Tom Adams, a media analyst based in Carmel Valley, California. "It's almost a panic out there," agrees Derek Baine, an analyst with Paul Kagan Associates. "There's going to be a lot of dealing this year.'' But will...