Eisner

On Sept. 11, Eisner Communications was to run through a pitch it was to give less than a week later to try to win the account of the Washington, D.C., Convention and Tourism Corp. Events, obviously, intervened. That day, "We were dealing with our own emotions, and dealing with what this means for our effort," said Steve Eisner, president and chief executive officer of the agency. The run-through was scrubbed, and the agency sent a video crew to Washington the next day, attempting to capture a city struggling to recover from the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and on the World Trade Center in New York.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission dropped a claim against Walt Disney & Co. Chief Executive Officer Michael D. Eisner, freeing him from a settlement the company reached with the agency this week over disclosure violations, people familiar with the matter said yesterday. Eisner and the SEC staff had reached an accord in which he took blame for not telling investors the company had business ties to some directors, said the sources, who asked not to be named. The agreement didn't involve a fine and called for Eisner to refrain from violating securities laws, the sources said.

GEORGETOWN, Del. - Their wives were close friends. Their Aspen vacation homes were a 10-minute drive apart. When one underwent heart surgery, the other kept vigil at the hospital. But whatever personal chemistry Walt Disney Co. chief executive Michael D. Eisner and former Disney President Michael Ovitz enjoyed didn't work professionally. So Eisner pushed out his friend, who never forgave or forgot. Nearly eight years later, the two men find themselves joined again, this time in a courtroom in this small Delaware town.

LOS ANGELES - Walt Disney Co. ex-directors Roy Disney and Stanley Gold said yesterday that they would begin meeting immediately with representatives of institutional investors, stepping up their campaign to oust chief executive Michael Eisner from the board. Roy Disney said in an interview that when he meets with Institutional Shareholder Services, the largest adviser to fund managers on proxy votes, he will say Eisner has mismanaged Burbank, Calif.-based Disney. Roy Disney and Gold said they plan to meet with as many as 50 shareholders before the company's annual meeting March 3 in Philadelphia.

Eisner Communications said yesterday that it has won the multimillion-dollar Lenox account and is launching print ads that will attempt to broaden the fine-china company's appeal. "We're trying to win a number of first-class brands," said Abe Novick, senior vice president of strategic business development for Baltimore-based Eisner. "It's a classic American brand. It's an icon." The account is a significant win for a shop of Eisner's size, said Janet Wagner, associate chair of marketing at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland.

The former Bagby Furniture Co. warehouse in Little Italy would be transformed into a "communications factory" housing Baltimore's second largest advertising agency and a sound studio in a deal expected to close in about a month.Eisner & Associates Inc. is negotiating to buy the mostly vacant warehouse at Fleet and Exeter streets and move its 85-person headquarters from Mount Vernon by early 1998, agency President Steve Eisner said yesterday.The agency, with more than $100 million in billings and clients such as Black & Decker and Helix Health System, has outgrown quarters in a block-long brownstone on West Madison Street over the last few years.

The California Public Employees' Retirement System and five other pension funds this week will demand a meeting with Walt Disney Co.'s board to press directors to name a successor to Chief Executive Officer Michael D. Eisner, people familiar with the matter said. The New York State Common Retirement Fund, California State Teachers' Retirement System and pension funds in Ohio, Connecticut and North Carolina will join CalPERS, the largest U.S. pension fund, in sending a letter to Disney Chairman George J. Mitchell and the rest of the Disney board, said the people, who asked not to be named.

Eisner Communications Inc. and its Eisner Underground Division won 33 ADDYs at the 29th annual Best in Baltimore ADDY Awards Show. Spur Design took home the best-in-show award. Spur Design won for its Axis Theatre posters, which advertise plays for the local theater group. Spur Design also won four ADDY awards. Seventy-eight ADDYs were awarded at Saturday's ceremony from 480 entries. Eisner Communications won 21 ADDYs, and Eisner Underground won 12, along with a special judges' award for copywriting.

One helped turn a gap-toothed mascot for a 1950s humor magazine into a symbol for everything irreverent, impertinent and just plain silly. The other brought a moody, film-noir sensibility to comic books that revolutionized the art form. Both Frank Kelly Freas and Will Eisner were beloved comic artists whose popularity spanned decades. But more than that, they were innovators who refused to treat the comics pages as a child's toy. Freas, who died Sunday at his Los Angeles home at age 82, was a key member of the "usual gang of idiots" at MAD magazine, an illustrator whose covers, always featuring the cheerfully vacuous Alfred E. Newman, set the tone for the Golden Age of American satire.

Doner Direct and Eisner Communications Inc. shared the honor of best-of-show at the 27th Annual Best in Baltimore ADDY Awards Show, held over the weekend at the Mechanic Theatre. Doner Direct, which won the award for the second year in a row, received the title for a television commercial done for Sylvan Learning Centers called "Young Reading." That spot featured a little girl alone in a forest clutching a book and talking in the third person about her struggles with reading. Doner won a total of four ADDYs and six certificates of excellence.