Of course, Disney was already well on its way by the mid-1980s, since they were almost bankrupt by 1984 due to the negligent management of Roy Disney's successors, when Eisner was brought in to lead the company to responsible management.
Of course, as a business analyst one would hope you had the facts correct.
In fact, Walt Disney Productions was no where near bankruptcy. The company had been run since the time of Roy O's death by a small group of his (not Walt's) advisors. Card Walker and such were running the company as if it was still 1965, too timid and to business like to change anything. They were the exact sharp pencil, operational business people that Walt knew would never be able to run a creative enterprise.
The primary issue was that Disney was not performing up to the level that most people thought it could. While profitable, other studios had become rich from Disney-like films such as
Star Wars,
Raiders of the Lost Ark,
E.T. and such. No one could understand why it wasn't Disney that was making these films.
This sparked an internal power struggle between the "Walt side" of the company (lead by Ron Miller) and the Roy side of the family (lead by Roy E. Disney). Corporate power struggles always attract the interest of bottomfeeders; several Wall Street "investment" types began buying large blocks of shares. The idea was that a) someone could run Disney better than a squabbling family and b) the company's stock price made the parts of the company worth more than the corporation as a whole.
Walt Disney Productions succeeded in buying the shares back from one of these investors (a practice called greenmail), but other, smaller sharks had been attracted. By this time the "Walt side" of the family had managed to push the old management out of the way and had begun to make some immediate changes.
It had been long, long known that the best way to turn around a movie studio was to make movies that made money. They created Touchstone Pictures, their first big hit being
Splash. They had also just opened EPCOT Center at Walt Disney World and began an effort to expand on the success of that park. They also launched The Disney Channel to bring Disney productions back into the home and to expand into the brand new area of cable television. And of course, they partnered with the Oriental Land Company to build Tokyo
Disneyland which continues to be Disney's most profitable and successful park.
Of course, many in business don't want to wait. But mostly they want to loose. While the "Walt side" was doing all of this, Roy E. was on the sidelines. Nor did he want to work with the management of the company. So, he threw his lot in with one of the "investors" that was trying to destroy Disney. Furthermore he brought in another set of "investors" who bought even more shares.
Disney wasn't saved - it was taken over by the Bass Brothers.
Since Roy E. detested the "Walt side" management, he fired them all. The Bass Brothers and others brought in a new management team to run their purchase. Frank Wells was brought in the run the company, Michael Eisner was hired just to give the studio an edge into the Hollywood power structure (Eisner had just been fired as head of Paramount Studios). Of course, no one at the time realized what Eisner was really like he was just kept around because he had a good rolodex to the Betty Ford Clinic.
But that's another story.
