The end of the affair?

The Walt Disney Company chief executive Michael Eisner has been compared to the hunter who bagged Bambi’s mother, but he is also responsible for the firm earning $1bn in the first three months of its financial year. Kyran Fitzgerald reports.

The Barbarians are once again at the gates, this time targeting the Disney empire.

Michael Eisner: has shipped a lot of bad publicity and his hefty pay packets are under scrutiny. In 2000 he took home $11m.

IT has been a difficult few years for America's investment bankers, but things are looking up. The corporate raiders are back in town. Once again, the wolves are circling a large mammal.

His name is Michael Eisner and for the past 20 years he has been in charge of the entertainment company, Walt Disney.

Since the 1970s, when he headed up Paramount Pictures he has been a central figure in the American entertainment business. By 1992, he was also the wealthiest, having netted a staggering $200 million in stock options.

The principle wolf near the Eisner campfire is Brian Roberts, the president of America's leading cable company, Comcast. Mr Roberts approached Mr Eisner with his offer for The Walt Disney Company some weeks ago and was sent packing.

This week, he tabled his bid worth $60 billion a hostile bid which could well trigger a bid battle, filling the pockets of plenty of lawyers and investment bankers in the process.

Right now, a lot of people are licking their lips. The bid, if successful, will create the world's largest media business with a combined worth of $125bn.

Critically, the Disney boss has managed to alienate Roy Disney, nephew of Walt and the man who helped to lever him into the top job back in 1984.

The early lives of Michael Eisner and Walt Disney could not have been more different. Disney, arguably the most significant figure in 20th century popular culture was the son of a Missouri farmer turned-newspaper vendor who as a boy got out of bed at 3.30am, with his brother to deliver the papers.

In 1918 aged 16 he served as an ambulance driver in WW1 before returning to study art and start an animated film business, Laugh O Grams. The business went bankrupt, but his fortunes were about to turn.

As legend has it, he saw a mouse begging for food in his art studio and this led to the creation of the cartoon legend, Mickey Mouse, who made his first bow in Disney's first film hit, Steamboat Willie, in 1928.

By then, he had moved to Hollywood to join his brother, Roy and the pair had started their own animation studios with $750 of largely borrowed money.

The really big breakthrough came in 1937 with Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs.

The brothers pumped a then unprecedented $1.5m into the film which broke all box office records. This was followed, in the 1940s, by a succession of cartoon film hits: Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo and Bambi.

In 1955, the first of the great Disney theme parks, Disneyland was opened and the company managed to make the transition to television while maintaining a hefty film output. By the time of his death in 1966, Walt reigned supreme.

By then, Michael Eisner was in his early twenties. His upbringing had been quite different. No dawn break newspaper rounds. Eisner grew up in a large apartment on New York's exclusive Park Avenue. The family dressed formally for dinner. Silver spoons went in and out of family mouths.

At university, he studied English literature. After graduation, he started out in television at NBC. He first made his mark at ABC, the TV network he would later acquire as head of the Disney corporation.

In the late 1970s, he moved to Paramount Pictures as president. At just 35, he was a big player. Soon, Paramount was top dog with a series of film hits, including Saturday Night Fever, Grease and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

By the time he reached Disney, he was seen as one of Hollywood's golden boys. History often repeats itself.

Back in 1984, Disney's then chief executive Ron Miller was forced out by a group of shareholders led by Roy Disney and longtime associate, Staney Gold. Also in on the act was the famous arbitrageur, Ivan Boesky, who would later go to jail.

Eisner took over control as part of a double act with Frank Wells.

Earlier he had joined up with his old Paramount associate Jeffrey Katzenberg and for several years, the trio could do no wrong.

Disney's animation operation was revived and the theme parks renewed and expanded. Income from merchandising surged, Miramax was acquired and this deal was followed by a series of hits including The English Patient, starring Juliette Binoche and Kirstin Scott Thomas and Shakespeare in Love, the film that launched Gwyneth Paltrow's career.

Within eight years, the company's market value increased tenfold and 15 of the 17 films produced during this period made money. A hint of trouble to come was the disastrous launch of Euro Disney in Paris. The theme park gobbled up around $1bn before a restructuring plan was put in place.

THINGS started to go wrong when Frank Wells died in a helicopter crash and Michael Eisner fell out with the talented Katzenberg who headed off to join Stephen Spielberg.

The last five years have been difficult ones for Disney. The share price has underperformed. Its ABC subsidiary is in difficulties, Euro Disney is back in the red and there have been a few big screen flops.

One bright spot was the partnership with Pixar, the film company which produced last year's Finding Nemo hit. However, Eisner has fallen out with Pixar's boss, Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple Computers and this relationship is coming to an end.

Roy Disney has mounted his charger one more time to come to the rescue of his uncle's company and is leading a group of dissident shareholders seeking to force Eisner out at the upcoming annual meeting.

Yet again, financier, Stanley Gold is at his side.

Michael Eisner has been shipping a lot of bad publicity and his hefty pay packets are under scrutiny. In 2000 alone, he took home $11m in salary and bonuses, though the previous year, he did have to make do with less than one million.

He is now being compared with Cruella de Ville, the villainess in 101 Dalamations and with the hunter who bagged Bambi's mother.

Nevertheless, he has built Disney to the point where its annual revenues exceeded $1bn in the first three months of its current financial year and there are concerns that Comcast, a cable company, with over 20,000,000 US customers, will have little feel for the sort of business Disney specialises in.

However, Comcast looks set to dangle the offer of a directorship in the direction of the Disney-Gold faction and institutional investors may well be happy to accept this all-share bid.

The bets are however, that Michael Eisner may well have to be dragged out kicking and screaming. One thing is clear. He will not be joining the panhandlers out on the strip. Hollywood may indeed be the Boulevard of Broken Dreams for many, but Mr Eisner is likely to leave the place a wealthy man with well over $300m in cashed stock options in his back pocket.

There will be no need for him to bring the silver spoons down to the pawnbrokers just yet.