Steve's Jobs Could Have Conflicts Of Interest

from the bet-he'll-take-goofy's-office-too dept

In all the talk about a potential buyout of Pixar by Disney, one angle that's getting some attention is whether such a deal -- and the resulting position of influence within Disney for Pixar and Apple CEO Steve Jobs would create a conflict of interest. Surely part of the attraction of buying Pixar for Disney would be to gain Jobs' expertise in technology and digital media; his role at Apple in creating and profiting from those technologies could create conflicts and the potential for self-interested decisions. Jobs has had to do some of this in his current roles, but a seat on Disney's board could bring with even more problems. As Matt Marshall points out, Jobs could solve the problem by getting a new CEO at either Apple or Pixar, but he's not likely to do that. It's hard to feel too bad for the guy, though, since his Pixar stake is believed to be worth about $3.5 billion -- not a bad return on the $10 million he spent for it in 1986.
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  • identicon
    darin, 23 Jan 2006 @ 1:02pm

    Jobs

    I think he spent 10 million rather than 10 dollars.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Judah, 23 Jan 2006 @ 3:27pm

    disney/pixar

    Yeah i thought it was weird that Disney is buying Pixar by selling the head of Pixar Disney essentially.


    Check out the article http://business.blognewschannel.com/index.php/archives/2006/01/23/introductions-disneypixar/

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      doodman, 23 Jan 2006 @ 4:27pm

      Re: disney/pixar

      disney won't buy pixar. pixar hates disney, they screwed them over and couldn't wait to stop dealing with disney. eisner screwed it all up.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Acetaminophen, 23 Jan 2006 @ 7:07pm

        Re: disney/pixar

        That was Eisner. Robert Iger has been working the "Eisner was f-ing it all up. I love you" angle with EVERYONE. Many of the bridges Eisner burned with his strong hand tactics are being rebuilt by Iger. In fact, I think it's a matter of people simply hating Eisner as a person, from the night and day response Iger has been getting.

        link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Peter Beerli, 23 Jan 2006 @ 4:49pm

    He did it again

    Some years ago Apple bought Jobs' firm NeXT for around $400 million (if memory serves), well they wanted to use NEXTSTEP (now MACOSX). I always had the impression that that was a great achievement: as the boss of the small firm to take over the far bigger one. Steve seems to do it again.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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