It put the resort on course for profitability but that was just the start. With a wave of its magic wand, it eased the debt burden on Disneyland Paris by taking on its loans and refinancing them to significantly reduce the interest rate. Instead, Disney gave loans to its French outpost and it handed over one of the biggest in 2012. The majority of the shares in it were owned by the public and this made it difficult for Disney to pour money into the business as it has done with its parks in the United States which it wholly-owns. Only 49% of the company was in Disney's hands making it the private party in the partnership. Disney got its wish but it came with a catch.Īs we have reported, the French government was only prepared to allocate such a large plot of land to a foreign company on condition that it entered into a public-private partnership.ĭisney incorporated a company, now known as Euro Disney Associes to run the resort and it was listed on the Paris Euronext exchange. When Disney was looking for a site in Europe it requested a plot of land a fifth the size of Paris in order to maintain its exacting standards in the area surrounding the parks.
