- The lead up to Pixar’s hugely oversubscribed IPO was marked by great change
- In this book, Lawrence Levy – then finance director – describes how he and Steve Jobs changed the direction of the company forever
Steve Jobs had a knack for choosing great deputies. At Apple (US: AAPL) he picked Tim Cook as his chief operating officer, who provided the focus and discipline to turn Mr Jobs’ endless imagination into the world’s biggest company. And he made Lawrence Levy the finance boss at Pixar, then a fledgling animation and computing company which Mr Jobs had acquired eight years previously.
Mr Levy’s appointment – made to “stem the tide of red ink” which was cutting fiercely into Mr Jobs’ personal wealth – resulted in a hugely oversubscribed initial public offering (IPO), the highest grossing animated film of all time and a 50:50 partnership with the world’s biggest media company, Walt Disney (US: DIS); all of which are chronicled in Mr Levy’s uplifting book, To Pixar and Beyond.