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Back to Disney: The Renaissance and the Empire.

Why Did Michael Eisner Turn Down AOL?

Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal say one of the best things Michael Eisner did as CEO of the Walt Disney Company, other than buying ESPN, was the deal he refused. Steve Case approached him about combining AOL and Disney before the Time Warner deal.

AOL later merged a stock that was marked very high, and whose intrinsic value was close to worthless, with Warner Brothers, a durable company. That could have happened to Disney. In the dot-com era Eisner stayed skeptical and would not give Disney away in that kind of transaction. He watched the valuations, treated them as a trap, and kept the company out of a deal that would have swapped a real studio for a bubble.

Transcript

Disney: The Renaissance and the Empire ·

Acquired

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