Yahoo Finance Bob Iger On Succession, Nelson Peltz, Elon Musk & “Woke” Content Day After Disney Wins Proxy Battle
Bob Iger took a victory lap Thursday morning, a day after Disney fended off activist investor Nelson Peltz in a fierce proxy battle. In an interview on CNBC, the CEO said the fight had one positive: getting the company in closer touch with investors as it lobbied hard for its board slate. He also said succession is top of mind and a new CEO would require a decent transition period, as well as commented on current (and perhaps former) adversaries from Ike Perlmutter to Elon Musk and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Peltz didn’t have much strategically to offer Disney but did successfully press on one big misstep: succession. The billionaire activist investor lost his bid for a board seat, but did get the support of 30% of shareholders at yesterday’s annual meeting. The voting and tally marked the end of a bitter and expensive months-long fight.
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“Clearly shareholders care about [succession], given what the company has been through,” Iger acknowledged today. A dedicated board committee led by chair Mark Parker met seven times last year and will meet more frequently in 2024 to identify the next CEO well before Iger’s contract ends in 2026.
A transition period is key. “I think it’s really important to name the right person at the right time [and] create a transition process that is healthy,” he said.
Iger wouldn’t say how long of a transition is under consideration. “But I think it’s really important … This is a big, complicated company,” he said. “And not only is important to choose the right person, but it’s really important to give that person all the opportunity in the world to be successful in the job. And the board is very focused on who the person is when the decision should be made. And essentially, how the handover will take place … They are treating it with a sense of urgency.”
The last, unsuccessful handoff of the CEO baton “could not have happened at a worst moment for the company and in the world,” he said, noting that Covid hit in full force soon after Bob Chapek was named CEO, shutting down moviegoing, production, theme parks and live sports. “This company was hit very, very hard. And it handed my successor a set of challenges that were enormous in nature. And hopefully that will not be the case the next time around. I don’t think that there’s much more I can add in terms of the process itself or the transition. Obviously, we all learn from the past.”
Iger rarely defends his former handpicked CEO replacement, who also made a series of strategic missteps, and who was arguably kneecapped by Iger staying on to oversee creative.
“We’re focused on the future, not the past at this point … Because you can’t do anything about what happened. You just have to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Iger said.
Overall, he said, “This whole process [fighting off Peltz] gave the board and some members of management an opportunity to engage with many shareholders on an even deeper level and have a good, honest, candid dialogue, where we had an opportunity to describe to the shareholders, what our priorities are, and what our various processes are, including succession. And we had an opportunity to listen to them and hear what was on their minds as well. So I think, if anything came of this, from that it’s positive is that it did in fact increase the engagement that we’ve had with shareholders in this. And that’s a very good thing.” Critics have argued that Disney and its board are insular and should have been engaging more fully with more shareholders for years.
“Clearly, shareholders are interested in care very much about succession,” he said, “given what the company has been through.”
Iger dismissed Peltz’s 30% support and denied totally that the outside pressure had boosted Disney stock or nudged the company’s recent flood of strategic initiatives. Many Wall Streeters believe it had some impact.
Asked about noisy criticism from elsewhere, X owner Musk in particular, Iger said, “I ignore it. It has no relevance to Disney or to me … People have been coming after the company and me for years and I don’t get distracted.”
As advertisers including Disney fled the company formerly known as Twitter last year, Musk railed at them at a November conference. “Don’t advertise,” he urged any marketer with misgivings. “Somebody’s going to try to blackmail me with advertising?! Blackmail me with money? Go f*ck yourself. Go. F*ck. Yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is.”
“Hey, Bob, if you’re here in the audience,” Musk said. “Sorry, that’s how I feel.”
It was downhill from there. Musk also financed a lawsuit by fired The Mandalorian actress Gina Carano.
Another brawl may have quieted down. Disney recently settled Florida state litigation paving the way for investment and smoother relations. Asked if that meant no more hostility between DeSantis and the company, he said, “I would hope not, but I can’t I can’t speak for Governor DeSantis in that regard.”
And on Ike Perlmutter, a big Disney shareholder who allied with Peltz in the proxy fight, Iger said the fight was not personal “on my side. I was supporting the interests of the company, not my personal interests, and defending what the company and the board was doing, as opposed to defending myself.”
“If you are asking if it was personal on their side, [Perlmutter] would probably say no [but] I think there was probably a degree of personal animus there … We closed the Marvel offices and it did result in Ike leaving the company. But I am not going to put words in his mouth.”
On the woke content controversy that has dogged Disney, ” he said, entertaining audiences is the priority.
“I think the noise is sort of quieted down. I’ve been preaching this for a long time at the company [from] before I left, and since I came back, that our number one goal is to entertain, I think the term ‘woke’ is thrown around rather liberally No, no pun intended. I think a lot of people don’t even understand really what it means. The bottom line is that infusing messaging as a sort of a number one priority in our films and TV shows is not what we’re up to. They need to be entertaining. And where the Disney company can have a positive impact on the world, whether it’s, you know, fostering acceptance and understanding of people of all different types great. But, generally speaking, we need to be entertainment for an entertainment first company, and I’ve worked really hard to do that.”
“We’re trying to reach a very, very diverse audience. And, on one hand, in order to do that, the stories you tell have to really reflect the audience that you’re trying to reach … And really, first and foremost, they want to be entertained, and sometimes they can be turned off by certain things. And we just have to be more sensitive to the interest of a broad audience. It’s not easy, you can’t please everybody all the time, right?”
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