Disney’s former CEO Bob Iger is the subject of a new profile at Financial Times, in which he shares new quotes about the long-discussed idea of Apple and Disney merging. Here’s what he said.
Bob Iger explains why Apple-Disney merger conversations didn’t move forward
Now that Disney’s twice-CEO Bob Iger has officially wrapped his time at the company, he’s ready to publicly reflect on his legacy.
In a wide-ranging new piece at Financial Times, Iger speaks about a variety of issues related to his Disney tenure. One topic he covers is acquisitions and mergers.
After mentioning Disney’s highly successful acquisitions of Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilm, and more controversial 21st Century Fox deal, the FT piece mentions Iger’s interest in tech.
Top comment by Joe Belkin
Apple does not pay for "brand names" - they already have one of the best brands APPLE. Most companies values are based 75% minimal for the brand name - why buy it just to convert it to Apple? Apple also doesn't buy legacy brands with alltheir baggage (pensions, debt, history, etc ) like Stellanis trying to sell Chrysler-Dodge to Apple ... the only company with a consumer name they bought was Beats and 99% of the reason they bought it was to get the two leads to get their connections and that they have the framework for a music streaming service (plus the headphones were an okay addition since the market is so fragmented( but crucially they wanted the two guys who were connected. Disney's margins are also too low margins for Apple's business plus a management structure full of people not bought into the Apple way ... disney is a typical company where departments first fight each otherfor resources ... at Apple, there is no duplication. The ipad and macbook sftware people just works in software, so they don't hide features to unveil only in their dept ... People not working at Apple would be counter productive
A near-acquisition of Twitter fell apart when Iger got cold feet over the potential distraction it could be for the company. However, there’s one other tech deal he clearly hoped to make. Daniel Thomas writes:
The bigger deal would have come from nascent talks to merge Disney with Apple — a merger which, Iger thinks, would have been “truly transformational and equal”.
“We talked about it internally, and we had some conversations with Apple about it, but it never went anywhere.” Why not? Iger shrugs: “Well, Apple didn’t show that much interest.”
Iger wrote in his memoir that he believed Apple and Disney would have joined if Steve Jobs were still alive.
However, it sounds like Iger was keen to make a deal happen in the post-Jobs era too. But Apple didn’t take the proposal too seriously.
What do you think of the idea of Apple and Disney merging? Let us know in the comments.
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