In February 2020, Disney's board handed the chief executive's job to Bob Chapek, a company veteran who had run Disney's parks division. He succeeded Bob Iger, the architect of Disney's modern era — the Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm and Fox acquisitions — who had led the company for 15 years and stepped down to become executive chairman.
Chapek's tenure ran into trouble. The pandemic shut Disney's theme parks, the company's streaming business racked up losses, and the stock fell. A disappointing earnings report in November 2022 was the final straw: the board reached out to Iger over the weekend, and on 20 November 2022 the company terminated Chapek without cause.
The same day, Disney reappointed Iger as chief executive, for a term ending 31 December 2024, on a $1 million base salary and a $25 million annual target equity grant. Iger had retired less than a year earlier, at the end of 2021. The board had brought back the very man Chapek had replaced.
The case was about succession. A board that replaces its chosen successor with the predecessor is admitting the choice did not work. Disney spent about two and three-quarter years under a leader it ultimately did not want to keep, and the rehire of Iger — however reassuring to investors — was the signal that the company had never really settled on who came next.
The board fired Chapek and rehired Iger, admitting the succession failed; the cost was years of strategic drift under a leader they ultimately replaced.
The board chose an insider, the parks chief, to succeed a transformative CEO, then reversed course when the results disappointed — the succession did not survive contact with the job
A difficult stretch, the pandemic's hit to parks, mounting streaming losses and a falling stock, tested the new CEO, and the board lost confidence after a bad earnings report
Rehiring the retired predecessor is an admission that no genuine successor had been prepared; it reassures investors in the short term but signals an unresolved leadership question
The cost was not a single number but years of strategic drift under a leader the board ultimately replaced with the man he had succeeded
A succession that ends in rehiring the predecessor was never a succession. Disney picked Chapek to follow Iger, then brought Iger back 2.75 years later — years of drift, proof no successor was chosen.
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