Lord of misrule

According to the business press, the age of the ‘imperial CEO’ is now behind us, swept away by a wave of scandals and collapsing stock prices. But for much of the 1980s and 1990s, Michael Eisner was an emperor’s emperor.

Recruited from Paramount in 1984, the Walt Disney Company’s new chairman and chief executive officer immediately set about shaking up the poorly performing company. He boosted cash flow by significantly increasing theme park admission prices. He released Disney’s classic animated features as home videos, realising hundreds of millions of dollars of value from the Disney library. He launched a highly successful chain of stand-alone retail stores. And, along with Walt Disney Studios chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, he presided over what James Stewart in DisneyWar calls ‘the most astonishing studio turnaround in Hollywood history’, leading a renaissance in both animated features — with hits like Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin — and live action films.