AllGuinness

[Update]
It looks like the deal is basically done. A little voting here and ther, and trade review, but none of that will stop it from happening. I am a little surprised at the final price of about 7.4 Billion. That makes about half a billion more than I thought. A little out of control, but I do like what they have done with the executives. I just hope they can all work together to make the future bigger and better for Disney.

Discussed on Gigaom.
[/Update]

A while back Pixar broke off talks with Disney about continuing their distribution arrangement amid talk that there was a rift between then Disney CEO Michael Eisner and Pixar head Steve Jobs. Jobs, who also heads Apple computers, thought that Disney wasn’t being fair with the distribution rights and the amount of money it was taking in the deal. He was probably right, but I thought that Disney should have just let the deal fall through and concentrated on making its own computer animation division stronger. Most of the Disney stockholders and board didn’t agree with me, apparently, because Eisner announced his retirement a short time late, and many people looked at this deal as the last in a string of bad decisions he had made. Robert Iger took over at the head of Disney, and almost from the start was again in discussions with Pixar. If he could get a new deal with Pixar, it would surely be a coup for the new CEO.

Talks continued and I expect an announcement shortly that Disney will be buying Pixar. The deal will probably be for 6.9 billion dollars, or so.

Is this the coup I was talking about? Maybe, but I don’t think it was for Iger or Disney.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think that Pixar is a bad thing to own, or that it won’t be alright in the long run, I just have a little problem with the purchase price, and with the possible culture shock of the two coming together.

The real coup is for Steve Jobs. It wasn’t like he was hurting for money, or anything, but this deal should net him something like 3.5 billion, making him the largest individual shareholder in Disney. Additionally, there is some talk that there might be a Disney presidency for him in the future. The presidency issue both excites and worries me.

Jobs is a visionary and a creative type. He may not be an artist, but he sees the way to guide a forward thinking company like Pixar. Same with Apple. He doesn’t invent products (I don’t think), but he has the vision to see them to fruition. The thing I fear is another Ovitz situation.

Disney is a creative company, to be sure, but there culture is so sprawling that the men at the top need to be ready to plow through a bureaucratic like system, as well as take creative lead. If Iger can successfully separate the jobs between the president and the CEO, there will be good, if not, bad. That is all too speculative at this point, however.

If Disney does buy Pixar as expected, and Jobs doesn’t become president, there is still a huge culture gap to deal with. I just hope Disney realizes what they are buying. Pixar isn’t just a name. If you want a name, you couldn’t do much better than Disney anyhow. It certainly isn’t just a pile of computers and software. What Pixar is mostly, is a way of thinking about and doing things. It is a commitment to quality while others are content cranking out sub-par offering like Shreck or the like. They way the stories are developed is much like it was in the old Disney days. If Disney goes through with this deal and tries to change the way Pixar works to fit in, they should just save their money. It would ruin the process at Pixar.

I just wish they bought it five years ago when the purchase price might have been about half. Oh well.