Three days before the stunning announcement that he was buying ABC, Disney chairman Michael Eisner wasn’t huddled with troops of MBAs. He was sitting around with the company’s feature animators, discussing the wisecracking gargoyles in the upcoming The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Nothing new here. He had obsessed over the hummingbird’s face in Pocahontas. He’d ordered up a bigger role for the baboon Rafiki in The Lion King. He does this stuff all the time.
Now, apparently, he also buys $19 billion companies, after years of resisting even the tiniest acquisitions. “I'm a bottom fisherman,” he’d say, demurring on buyout after buyout brought to him by his lieutenants. Less than two years ago, say people close to the company, Eisner came close to buying Capital Cities/ABC for $70 a share, or about $1 1 billion. But despite the urging of executives around him, Eisner balked at the price. Last week, of course, he agreed to pay around $123 a share, or $19 billion-hardly bottom fishing. […]
