Disney And Pixar Merger Case Study

Managing Conflict
Mergers and acquisitions are frequent in today’s business environment. In fact, most leading organizations have at some point acquired competitors. For instance, Walt Disney purchased Pixar for $7.4 billion in 2006 (Monica, 2006).
In the beginning, Disney and Pixar worked together prior to the merger in 2006 on many projects such as Toy Story, in 1991. This was Pixar’s first feature film and was co-produced with Disney. This was part of a deal in which Pixar would produce 3 more films, and Disney would fund, market and distribute them. Issues transpired when Disney wanted to own all story, and sequel rights. Pixar was not happy about this at all, considering they felt all rights should be shared. After discussions between Pixar and Disney did not get resolved,

Pixar was firm in the fact that they wanted to keep control over their stories, characters and associated film assets. Steve Jobs, chair and majority stakeholder of Pixar at the time, was the lead to try to make this deal run smoothly. At the time Jobs and the CEO of Disney, Michael Eisner were at odds, which made this already a challenging situation. Eisner wanted Pixar to go find other distributors to work with, but Eisner was ultimately dismissed from Disney (Ngu, 2017). Eisner was replaced by Bob Iger in 2005, and this was good news for Pixar. Bob Iger made a promise to Pixar that they would have all authority of Disney and Pixar animation.
Pixar would still have Disney as a resource to help fund, market and distribute, and have less financial risk with Disney as a backer.
The deal went through in 2006 and Disney bought Pixar for 7.4 billion dollars. Steve Jobs became a board member of Disney, and a majority shareholder. Lasseter became the Chief Creative Officer of both Disney and Pixar. Steve Jobs was quoted that is was probably the best merger in history, and Pixar might not have been able to continue without it. (Ngu,