Two men in a television control room, with a large screen displaying 'Jetix' and 'Disney XD' logos.

On 8 December 2008, two months before the U.S. launch of Disney XD, Disney announced that it would be increasing its shares in Jetix Europe to 96% with the intention to buy the remaining shares in the company, effectively ending Jetix Europe's autonomy.[19] Disney wanted full control of the company and to bring the European Jetix channels completely under the Disney umbrella, enabling Disney to have a singular unified strategy for its channels. After the completion of Jetix Europe's share buy-back offer, Jetix Europe was delisted from the Euronext Amsterdam stock exchange on 27 February 2009.[20][21] In the discontinuation of the Jetix brand, Jetix Europe's CEO Paul Taylor resigned, with John Hardie, the Executive Vice President of Disney Channels EMEA as CEO on 11 February 2009. John Hardie left Disney for ITN in June 2009 and was replaced with Giorgio Stock (who later became head of Turner Broadcasting System Europe).[22] In June 2008, Disney France announced that Disney Channel and Jetix would merge operations; at the time, Jetix was being affected by falling carriage rates and came close to being removed from the CanalSat television provider in France after protracted negotiations. Jetix France was the first European version of Jetix to make the conversion to Disney XD on 1 April 2009.[23][24] Jetix became Disney Channel in countries where it was not already available (most notably the Central Eastern Europe and the Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, Romanian, and Israeli feeds). Mehr sehen