This week ATT threw in the towel on its doomed effort to buy T-Mobile after promising T-Mobile’s owner, Deutsche Telekom, $3 billion in cash plus valuable wireless spectrum if the merger failed on antitrust grounds, which, predictably, it did. As for ATT’s chief executive, Randall Stephenson, ATT’s lawyers and the ATT board, which ultimately bear responsibility, I’m not holding my breath that any of them will be held accountable for this $4 billion error in judgment.
But let’s save a discussion of crony capitalism for next year. It’s Christmas Eve, and the failure of ATT’s $39 billion bid, the biggest deal of 2011, was just one of many developments on subjects I wrote about this year, from the gathering chill in social networking public offerings to the fall of Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. This week I went back to some of the people and companies who appeared in my columns to find out how they’ve fared.
“Cars 2” was released in June to a critical drubbing unprecedented for a Pixar film. It also raised the specter that the quirky independence that had spawned such beloved classics as the “Toy Story” franchise, “Ratatouille” and “Up” had been extinguished by the heavy hand of Disney, which bought Pixar in 2006. “Cars 2” was still a hit by Hollywood standards — it generated $552 million in worldwide box-office revenue — but it turned out to be the worst-performing Pixar film ever, adjusted for inflation.
But there are encouraging signs emanating from Pixar’s headquarters in Emeryville, Calif. “This is not an executive-led studio,” John Lasseter, chief creative officer for Pixar and Disney Animation, told Brooks Barnes, a reporter for The New York Times, this summer. Mr. Lasseter stressed that “it’s not true” that “Cars 2” was influenced by Disney ownership and “my deepest desire is to entertain people by making great movies.”
More fundamentally, Pixar’s next big film is “Brave,” set for a June 22, 2012, release. “Brave” is a fairy tale (Pixar’s first) set in 10th-century Scotland with a girl as the protagonist. It’s not a sequel and, unlike “Cars 2,” has no obvious merchandising tie-ins (unless it unleashes a mania for girls’ bow and arrow sets). Also in development are a dinosaur film premised on the idea that they never became extinct, and a story set inside the human mind.
The movie “Brave,” said Doug Creutz, an analyst at Cowen Company, “certainly appears to be a return to creative risk-taking in terms of the subject matter. It’s important to look at Pixar’s output in the context of generally declining trends in animated box office as competition has gotten more intense. Pixar may have to work even harder, particularly on nonsequels, to deliver the kind of returns that had been normal for their films. I think there’s a lot riding on that film, more than normal, given the crosscurrents in the film business in general and the animation business in particular, the issues with ‘Cars 2,’ and the importance of Pixar to Disney.”
After saying his dealership was “close to death” during the financial crisis, David Kelleher, president of David Dodge Chrysler Jeep in Glen Mills, Pa., told me in July that he was cautiously optimistic about Chrysler under its new leadership from Fiat. When I called this week, he was too busy closing sales to come to the phone.
In October, Chrysler reported third-quarter profit of $212 million on a 24 percent surge in sales, in contrast to a loss of $84 million a year ago, and predicted a full-year profit. Many parts of the economy may be hurting, but the rejuvenated American auto industry is thriving. That is filtering down from Detroit to local economies across the country — an unqualified success for the Bush and Obama administrations’ controversial rescue mission.
This week a buoyant Mr. Kelleher told me that his dealership had its first 100-vehicle sales month in September since 2007, a feat it repeated in October and November. His dealership is on track to do even better this month. “Our Jeep sales have been red-hot,” he reported, and the updated Chrysler 300 “is coming on strong.” He said he just ordered as many 300s as he could get. Chrysler “is producing flat out,” he said, “and they’re selling everything they can make.”
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