Iger made Chapek Disney CEO and stayed as his boss — the board fired Chapek in 2022

On February 25, 2020, Bob Iger — who had pushed back his retirement four times — stepped down as Disney CEO, naming parks chairman Bob Chapek as an immediate successor. The structure told: Iger stayed as executive chairman for 22 months, Chapek reported to him, and Iger would 'direct the company's creative endeavors.' Iger kept the CEO office (he called its private shower his 'two-shower days'); Chapek moved to a smaller office.

Iger chose Chapek for integrity and business acumen — the cost-cutter who had tamed Shanghai Disney's $5.5 billion overruns — and told the board he didn't need to audition. He never consulted anyone who worked directly for Chapek, passed over streaming chief Kevin Mayer and TV head Peter Rice as 'too brash,' and skipped the board-interview vetting. Years later Iger said he had mistaken Chapek's operational record for leadership; some executives speculated he picked a successor who would never eclipse him.

Chapek confided the tenure was 'about three years of hell' under an unrelenting fear that Iger wanted his job back. On November 20, 2022, the board fired Chapek; Iger returned as CEO and within days dismissed Chapek's top lieutenants, including de facto number two Kareem Daniel. In July 2023 Iger extended his own contract through 2026 — his fifth delay — telling peers he came back to correct one of the biggest mistakes of his career.

The design repeated Michael Eisner's failed 2004 plan — predecessor stays as chairman over the new CEO — and Iger later repeated Eisner's pattern of a collapsed relationship with his number two.

The vetting was skipped: no interviews with Chapek's direct reports, no board meetings, and a choice made by a board whose every member Iger had personally selected.

The ambiguity of Iger keeping 'creative endeavors' guaranteed a second power center; Iger's own autobiography warned that when the top two fight, the company below cannot function.

A succession plan where the predecessor keeps the office, the creative control and the reporting line is not a handover — it is a 22-month audition in front of the old boss.

Iger, 72, was again running Disney and leading the succession search as of the September 2023 report, having extended his contract through 2026; Chapek, through a spokesperson, defended his record steering Disney through the pandemic and 'setting the course for business transformation.'