As Paramount’s pending takeover of Warner Bros Discovery preoccupies the industry, another seismic development in the media business has finally arrived: Disney‘s CEO transition.
Bob Iger, who returned to the top job in 2022, will officially pass the baton to successor Josh D’Amaro on Wednesday, ending a fabled run in the corner office. While the focus will now be on how D’Amaro will run things, it is also worth considering Iger’s trajectory once he finally detaches from the company where he has spent more than half a century.
The record shows a list of accomplishments by Iger over a combined 17-plus years as CEO across two separate stints. The most recent one, starting in November 2022, saw Iger confronting vexing issues like AI, labor unrest and the need to lay off thousands of workers amid sweeping industry consolidation. Despite the challenges that he has conceded were fiercer than he anticipated before his official return, the chief exec did manage several feats. Among them were overseeing the turn toward profitability by Disney+, a rebound at the film studio, a planned theme-park expansion in Abu Dhabi, and partnerships with OpenAI and Epic Games.
In his first CEO period, Iger soared to corporate-celebrity heights thanks to the acquisitions of Marvel, Pixar and Lucasfilm, and a charismatic style that enabled him to press the flesh at Disneyland, win favor on Wall Street and also manage delicate Hollywood egos. “Bob was straight out of central casting as a modern chief executive, and had such an aura that he could generally bend people to his will, without making them feel like they had been bent,” recalls one former executive in the strategic planning group, which was disbanded last year.
There were misfires, of course, like deals for Maker Studios and Club Penguin, not to mention a string of botched succession attempts, including his decision to settle on Bob Chapek after minimal vetting in 2020. One M&A move remains controversial: the $71.3 billion takeover of most of 21st Century Fox. While the deal gave Disney valuable IP like Avatar, The Simpsons and FX, plus control of Hulu, it came at a steep cost financially and entailed a messy integration process.
It remains unclear exactly how Iger plans to occupy himself once his affiliation with Disney ends. At 74, he enjoys the status of an industry statesman and will be in great demand as a mediator, consultant and speaker. After Wednesday’s Disney shareholder meeting, he will remain as a special adviser and member of Disney’s board of directors until the end of 2026. It is understood that much of his time thereafter will be devoted to sailing his recently acquired superyacht, Aquarius, and managing the controlling stake he and wife Willow Bay bought in women’s pro soccer team Angel City FC. They paid $250 million in 2024 in a deal that conferred the richest valuation on any women’s sports team to date.
Interviewed by ABC World News Tonight anchor David Muir in February after the succession process was settled, Iger said he will be “available on call” if anyone at Disney “should anyone want any advice from me.” When Muir asked Iger if the weight on his shoulders was a little lighter because of the completion of the long-fraught succession process, the exec replied, “It is, it is. Yeah, you know, you can’t just turn the switch off one day with something that you’ve been so involved with and is such an important part of your life. But I’m just looking forward to quieter moments and quieter days and a little bit more, I don’t know, room in my life.”
Bay Window
One former exec who still speaks regularly with Iger says Bay’s future as dean of USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism will help determine how much of an actual retirement phase Iger enters.
“Just track Willow,” the person said. “If she retires from USC, Bob will stay retired. If not, well, if your wife is working full-time and you’re not, it can get a little lonely. I believe him when he says he doesn’t want the daily hassles of running a giant company. And while I don’t think he’ll get restless, sometimes people surprise you. He’s 74 in an industry where you have people in their 80s and 90s still making big moves.”
Bay was re-appointed as Dean for a five-year term in March 2022, meaning another renewal will be due in the coming months.
When Bay chose to re-up in 2022 right after Iger had formally cut ties with Disney, the former executive saw that as a turning point. “That was the moment for him when he rethought what he was doing,” the exec said. “A venture capitalist or a private equity guy – that’s not him.”
Corporate governance experts have flagged the sequence of events in 2020 and 2021. Iger stepped down in February 2020 but then continued as executive chairman and creative adviser until the end of the following year. That enabled him to look over the shoulder of Chapek and render judgment when decisions went sideways.
In the case of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” legislation, which became a quagmire for Disney, Iger took the unusual step of stepping into the situation when Chapek had not publicly weighed in on it. “I’m with the president on this!” Iger tweeted, referring to Joe Biden.
Politics has long been a passion for Iger, a longtime supporter of Democrats, but a consideration of a presidential run last decade ended abruptly when the exec brought the prospect up with Bay. Iger recounted the story in his 2019 autobiography The Ride of a Lifetime, declaring it a settled issue – though that didn’t prevent his name from surfacing as one possibility when Biden was looking for an ambassador to China.
Past Prologue?
The two-and-a-half-year period in between his CEO stints saw Iger make a series of moves aimed at positioning him as a tech-forward investor and guru of the corporate executive suite. In Hollywood, years before the collective rush into streaming, Iger cultivated a relationship with Apple’s Steve Jobs, serving on the tech company’s board from 2011 to 2019.
In his Disney entr’acte, Iger joined Josh Kushner’s investment firm Thrive Capital as a venture partner. He invested in delivery service Gopuff and collectibles firm Funko (also signing on as a board advisor at Funko). Iger also joined the board of avatar technology company Genies and made a personal investment in the emerging metaverse player. He took a seat on animal-free dairy maker Perfect Day’s board of directors.
The Chapek chapter and previous succession about-faces that saw presumed heirs-apparent like Tom Staggs leave the company were blemishes on Iger’s otherwise strong record. But in terms of where his ultimate legacy winds up, a lot will depend on how the company fares in the years to come. Will D’Amaro, who made his interests in technology known while running the Experiences division, build on some of Iger’s signature initiatives bridging entertainment and tech? Given how much AI has mushroomed since the last time Iger was a free agent, it is certainly conceivable he might relish the chance to play an influential role in its rise, or in reframing its ambitions in creative industries like Hollywood.
One thing in Iger’s favor is the handling of the changing of the CEO guard by Disney chairman James Gorman, who won praise for how he handled his own exit as Morgan Stanley CEO in 2023. It has put Iger in a more promising light than he was in the last time he abruptly handed only part of the reins to Chapek in a move no one saw coming. As TC Cowen analyst Doug Creutz put it in a recent note to clients, “A full stepping back from Disney by Iger – unlike in 2020 where he remained chairman of the board – probably decreases the likelihood of internal politics becoming an obstacle to a successful CEO transition.”
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