3 Lessons From Wall Street Storming Walt Disney's Magic Kingdom by John Taylor

Reading a KILLER this morning that details "The Battle for Disney": Creatives vs. Wall Street and Storming The Magic Kingdom

This story originally appeared in my book club on Medium: https://medium.com/@nathanlatka/the-battle-for-disney-creatives-vs-wall-street-and-storming-the-magic-kingdom-fc47ad5040ea#.nl142fvap

Since I recently sold the company I launched at 19 years old — we did $5m in sales and raised $2.5m in VC- I’ve shifted my focus to reading a book a day. Join my book club now to see what a 26 year old with one exit under his belt is reading.

Author John Taylor artfully tells the story of wall street arbitragers trying to take over Disney with a proxy war in “Storming the Magic Kingdom”. In the end, the artists won with Michael Eisner landing the CEO role but not before many many Mickey’s were slaughtered.

In 1984 the value of Disney stock fell to very low level far below the value of the companies assets.

Famous corporate raider Saul Steinberg began buying up Disney shares fast accumulating a large percentage of the company. Walt Disney’s son in law, Ron Miller tried to fight off wall street but was too in-experienced to do it successfully leveraging tactics like poison pills, white nights, and eventually greenmail.

A short term solution, landed the Bass Brothers with 24% of Disney stock (acquired for between $55–65 a share) and turned out to be the best investment they ever made after they lobbied hard for an artist, Michael Eisner, instead of a business guy to take over and run the company.

Here are the 3 critical lessons I took from this book. Every successful business needs a money person and a creative person — these can’t be the same person. Always build rapport, it’s like filling a piggy bank with spare change, you’ll never know when you need to cash in on that social capital. Lastly, always hoard information — that’s where you find great deals.

1. Roy vs. Disney (money man vs creatives):
If you’re the creative, who is your business mind? If you’re the business mind, who is thinking up big, long term ideas for you?

Every business must balance these two intersects. Very rarely do you find a person that can exist in both worlds so usually there is a two person head (regardless of CEO title or other titles) keeping this critical balance in check.

2. Build rapport even when you don’t need it. You will one day.
Despite being a blood relative to Diseny, Ron Miller, the CEO of Disney was kicked out by his own board and shareholders. He assumed he’d always have control and felt comfortable with everyone because he was a blood relative...[Click here to continue to my medium post on this book: https://medium.com/@nathanlatka/the-battle-for-disney-creatives-vs-wall-street-and-storming-the-magic-kingdom-fc47ad5040ea#.nl142fvap

3. Study hard so you can find value others don’t see and leverage it
Deals exist everywhere. The raider Saul Seinberg simply added up the real estate assets of Disney and quickly realized they were worth more than the current stock price multiplied by all of the then current outstanding shares.

Teaming up with his friend Mike Milken...[Click here to continue to my medium post on this book: https://medium.com/@nathanlatka/the-battle-for-disney-creatives-vs-wall-street-and-storming-the-magic-kingdom-fc47ad5040ea#.nl142fvap ]