Walt Disney Case

Walt Disney had been an important partner for the distribution of Pixar's films. Before Toy Story, they had an agreement to create three more films together. However, Walt Disney and Pixar had a contract that was about to expire and negations could not be made between the two companies. Pixar wanted Disney to only do the distribution and at the same time, they could control all the products and get the ownership over the films. Pixar also wanted to finance the films on their own and keep 100% of their profits. Disney would not agree to this, and they did not renew their contract. So it only made sense to merge the two companies together. Disney had released all of Pixar's movies, and with the merger the two companies could work together freely and easily (DiMaggio, 2009). So on January 24, 2006 Walt Disney agreed to a price of $7.4 billion in an all stock deal and the merger was completed on May 5, 2006 (Amin, n.d.).

The advantages of the merger were that combining the two companies, the profits of both together would be greater than the sum of the individual parts. The merger insured that Disney still received Pixar's technology, which was the main process of computer based animation technology of which Disney needed to make their productions line more efficient. At the time of the merger, Disney had been hand drawing all their animations. Although Pixar got to keep their most of its established business plan, the key change was that all films produced post-merger were to be released as Disney-Pixar, and branding is a way to increase the price of merchandise and film ticket prices, which in return would generate more revenue (Amin, n.d.).

Quaker Oats successfully managed the widely popular drink Gatorade and thought it would be just as successful with Snapple. So in 1994, Quaker acquired Snapple for a purchase price of $1.7 billion, the largest acquisition Quaker ever made ("Biggest Merger and Acquisition," 2009). Quaker made the move to acquire Snapple in hopes of becoming the third largest nonalcoholic beverage marketer in North America. The expectation of combining Gatorade brand with the Snapple brand would in essence create a beverage company with about $2 billion in sales in the market for ready to drink iced teas, sports drinks, and fruit juice drinks, providing a variety for consumers (Collins, 1994).

In 2008, Countrywide Home Loans was having tremendous market difficulties with its more than $408