The Motley Fool: 'Mickey Mac? Not Likely'

by , 5:45 PM EST, February 27th, 2006

The Motley Fool's Rick Aristotle Munarriz on Monday responded to the possibility that Apple could buy Disney with a column titled "Mickey Mac? Not Likely." As The Mac Observer reported, Barron's this past weekend speculated that Apple could be in a position to buy Disney, thanks to the Pixar purchase that makes Steve Jobs the largest stakeholder in House of Mouse stock.

Mr. Munarriz noted that a friend summed up the possibility this way: "So lemme get this straight. I run company A and company B. I sell A to C. Then I try and buy C with B? No potential for sliminess there ..."

The columnist believes that "the three companies [would] look good in a wedding portrait," pointing out that "Disney owns the content that Apple lacks. It owns the children that Apple lost when Dell took over the pole position in classrooms. And each company rightfully believes that the market will pay a premium for quality."

However, "Apple needs to keep its relationships strong," Mr. Munarriz wrote. As a result, he explained, Apple could endanger its contracts with other content providers if it was construed as favoring content from the Disney family, which includes the ABC and ESPN TV networks, at the iTunes Music Store.

And while Jobs "would be a compelling fit at Disney," said the columnist, who once lobbed for him to take Michael Eisner's place at the company, he doesn't think "that even a multitasking genius like Jobs would be able to pull off the mother of all juggling acts to run both companies as thoroughly as he'd probably like."

Finally, Mr. Munarriz doesn't expect that "Apple and Disney shareholders would see eye-to-eye on making this kind of deal work at any price."