Full purchase by The Walt Disney Company
On 8 December 2008, Disney made an agreement to increase ownership in Jetix Europe to 96%, with intentions to purchase the remainder and have Jetix Europe delisted from the Euronext Amsterdam exchange.[44] By 2009, Disney had owned 99.8% of the company.[45]
On 15 July 2009, Jetix Europe subsidiary Jetix Italy S.r.l. announced that they would undergo a management buyout and rebrand as Switchover Media, and announced that they would purchase the GXT and K2 networks and blocks from The Walt Disney Company. The company also agreed to operate Jetix Italy for Disney until its rebranding as Disney XD Italy.[46][47]
Disney XD was expected to be introduced in European territories in 2009. Later, however, Disney announced that the Jetix channel in certain countries (Hungary, Romania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Russia, Bulgaria and Israel) would be rebranded as Disney Channel, marking that channel's first introduction in these countries. The change took place on 19 September 2009, in the CEE region.
On 19 September 2009, Disney Channel replaced Jetix in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Moldova, Romania and Slovakia. But the Russian feed was still broadcasting under the Jetix name until it was announced that a separate Disney Channel would launch. After the launch of Disney Channel in Romania and Bulgaria, the Jetix feed in Russia began to be independent and became localized, with Russian titlecards and banners with Russian hours.[20]
The last Jetix channel to rebrand as Disney XD was the Dutch version on 1 January 2010.[48] The last Jetix channel to close was the Russian version, which was rebranded as Disney Channel on 10 August 2010. The Jetix Play channels soon followed suit in 2010 and 2011, being replaced with Playhouse Disney/Disney Junior.[49]
Remnants of Jetix Europe continued until around 2012 to 2014, to shut down operations and as an overhang period to fully integrate Jetix into Disney. European Disney XD co-productions such as Rekkit Rabbit contained the Disney XD logo in the credits, with "Jetix Europe Properties SARL, Luxembourg, Zurich Branch" credited underneath.[50]
As a legal entity, the UK subsidiary (which was mostly responsible for the operational side of Jetix) ended on 11 March 2019.[4] However, other UK-based Jetix divisions, Jetix Entertainment Limited and Jetix Consumer Products UK Limited were operational until 20 April 2014,[26][2] although by then Jetix's functions were already integrated into Disney. The Dutch subsidiary which mostly handled the corporate side of Jetix had its final shareholders meeting on 22 March 2012.[51]
