Kennon-Green & Co. Global Asset Management, Wealth Management, Investment Advisory, and Value Investing

Reflections on Superman and Mickey Mouse

I was reading a film review by actor James Franco of the new Superman movie, which I saw at the midnight premier right before I hopped on the flight out to California for the weekend.  My family wanted to go, and I’ve always like Henry Cavill’s work since the adaptation of the seminal work of Alexander Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo, so I thought it would be fun.  When we were in the theater, the talk turned to the actual character of Superman.

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A Look at Laugh-O-Gram Films, the Business Walt Disney Bankrupted

In the past week, we’ve talked about the phenomenal success of an investor who bought shares of Walt Disney Productions (now called The Walt Disney Company), a decision that would have turned a 1,000 share position costing $13,880 into somewhere between $26,672,640 and $40,000,000 between 1957 and 2013.  We even looked inside the secret family holding company, WED Enterprises, Walt Disney used to build his own family’s wealth and retain power.  Most people don’t know that before those two firms, there was another that changed the direction of Walt Disney’s life.  It did not enjoy a fairy tale ending but it did lay the foundation for the things that came much later.

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How Walt Disney Used WED Enterprises, Inc. as a Private Family Holding Company

After our discussion of The Walt Disney IPO earlier today, which was born out of Walt and his family consolidating three of the companies they owned underneath a single umbrella and issuing shares to the public to help finance the ever-expanding empire, including the creation of the Disneyland theme park in Anaheim, California, I thought it…

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