Apple Buying The Walt Disney Company Is Apparently a Real Possibility According to Analysts
We’ve been hearing for years that one day Apple could buy The Walt Disney Company. Talk of this potential Apple-Disney merger started back when Steve Jobs sat on the Disney board of directors and while nothing has ever happened with that, a new report from THR suggests that this merger is a very real possibility.
One insider previously said: “I don’t think [Apple] would buy the company as it presently exists, but if you see Bob start to divest things … that feels like he’s prepping for a sale. And there’s clearly no buyer like Apple.”
Well, it looks like that’s exactly what Bob Iger is doing. He already publicly talked about the possibility of selling Disney’s TV businesses such as ABC and FX. By slimming down Disney, it “could be a tempting acquisition target.”
The report explains that Apple is sitting on $62 billion in cash and cash equivalents and has a $2.8 trillion market cap. “And while it may be very true that Apple doesn’t want to buy a studio, maybe it would want to buy this studio —the one that, despite the challenges of the moment, has a vault full of priceless IP and remains the most valuable brand in entertainment.”
The fact of the matter is, if Iger decides to sell Disney, Apple is the most likely buyer. They have such a long history with each other and their leadership. There are a couple of hurdles for a deal like this to happen, though. The first is trying to get the price right is one, and the other is the government. It’s explained that the Biden administration, “has been aggressive in suing to prevent significant deals from being completed, albeit with mixed results.”
They’ve previously successfully stalled Paramount's sale of Simon and Shuster to Penguin Random House and there were unsuccessful attempts to prevent Microsoft from buying Activision Blizzard.
Anthony Sabino, an attorney and professor at St. John’s University, said: “It’s a given, it’s an absolute certainty that if there was some talk of Disney merging with somebody else, that would be scrutinized to the nth degree by the FTC, by the Department of Justice. So that would be basically walking into a bear trap that I’m not sure any company would be willing to get itself immersed with.” It’s then explained that a Republican administration “may prove to be more lenient when it comes to a major deal.”
It would be pretty interesting to see what would happen if a tech giant like Apple bought Disney. While, there is no talk of it actually happening right now, who’s to say that it won’t happen somewhere down the line. It’s very possible.
Iger responded to the report by saying: "I just am not going to speculate about the potential for Disney to be acquired by any company whether they're a technology company or not. Obviously, anyone who wanted to speculate about such things will happen immediately consider the global regulatory environment, I'll say no more than that. It's not something that we obsess about."