Disney is Bob Iger's Company

August 7, 2024·39 min·3 clips

Shareholders lined up around the block in Philadelphia, likened to opening weekend of Star Wars, to vote out Michael Eisner.

Bob Iger announced an exit. In February 2020, Disney's CEO said he was finally stepping down, though the transcript makes clear it was not a clean goodbye. He was still close to the wheel. CNBC set up the handoff with Iger and his newly named successor, while pointing to Iger's continued role through the end of 2021. Then the episode rolls the tape back. Succession at Disney comes off less like a tidy promotion than a pressure test inside a very watched company. Michael Eisner was under pressure. Roy E. Disney pushed a shareholder revolt that pulled in crowds described as old and young, with strollers, canes, and the buzz of a major opening weekend. Shareholders helped force the issue. Eisner lost the chairman title, and by the next year he was out as chief executive. Iger had been waiting. He arrived through the Capital Cities ABC acquisition after a long run at ABC and after seeing his own CEO path get cut off. Inside Disney, he did not look like the obvious pick. Eisner badmouthed him to some board members, and public reports painted him as an empty suit with too narrow a resume. But Iger stayed in the room. Other contenders dropped away, and Eisner eventually backed the man who had outlasted them. In 2005, Iger got the job. The appointment sets up the episode's bigger point: Iger's power came from endurance, not a grand entrance.

As heard by us

Disney's succession story lands as a boardroom drama with real stakes.

Disney's succession story reads like a real fight over control, not a tidy handoff. It starts with the 2020 announcement that Bob Iger would step down, a successor was named, and the transition was split in two.

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Why you'd press play

You want the Disney succession saga from Eisner to Iger, without the corporate fog.

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