Mickey Mousetrap

BOOKS

The big Disney deal

White knights? Crown jewels? Poison pills? The argot of Wall Street's takeover artists is the devalued slang of a fractured fairy tale. Witness the fiscal black magic that was unleashed when the speculators set their sights on Walt Disney Productions in 1984, carefully reconstructed in John Taylor's incisive Storming the Magic Kingdom (Knopf).

In the wake of its founder's death in 1966, Disney, once brashly entrepreneurial, had lapsed into a creative coma. Its movies had become marginal, its stock undervalued, when the voracious Saul Steinberg began circling ominously, out for plunder. As assembled by Drexel Burnham Lambert, his tender offer would have resulted in the sale of the studio, film library, and real estate, while he himself hung on to the Disney characters and theme parks. Innocent in the ways of the raiders—at one point, Disney's then chairman, Raymond Watson, asked, "Who is this Ivan Boe-esky?"—Disney's management first struck a defensive alliance with the Bass brothers of Texas, then, forced into a corner, bought off Steinberg with $325 million worth of greenmail. A national institution had been held for ransom.

Amidst the frenzied intrigue, Roy E. Disney, the disaffected nephew of the founder, did succeed in ousting C.E.O. Ron Miller, Walt's hapless son-in-law. And under the new management team of chairman Michael Eisner and president Frank Wells, the newly rechristened Walt Disney Company has seen net profits triple since '83, and its stock skyrocket by a multiple of five. Where Miller had tentatively tested the PG-rated waters with Splash, the new Team Disney has plunged into raunchy R-rated depths with Ruthless People and Outrageous Fortune. For while Walt played to Main Street, the new Disney plays to Wall Street, the one street where eighties dreams are made.

GREGG KILDAY

Disney's then chairman asked, "Who is this Ivan Boe-esky?"

-GREGG KILDAY