The Insanely High Salary Disney Is Paying Bob Iger To Run The Company Again
Disney will pay Bob Iger up to $27 million per year including potential bonuses to lead the company once again.
If there was ever a statement that can be relied upon as a standard fact of life is that a great leader and the leadership that they can bring to an organization is priceless in all facets of life. Disney has put a potential yearly $27 million dollar value for a proven leader who is regarded as one of the most successful past CEOs in the storied company’s history. Bob Iger’s compensation will be in the form of a one-million-dollar base salary with an additional one-million-dollar annual bonus, he will also have the potential to earn up to an additional $25 million dollars in an annual incentive-based award.
That is a big commitment from the Disney Media and Entertainment Company and the agreement is effective November 20th of 2022 and expires on December 31st of 2024. Even though this salary seems extremely large in comparison, Bob Iger is giving the Mickey Mouse Club a discount because when he stepped down from his post at the helm of the Disney empire in 2019 he earned roughly $47 million for his services. It’s also worth noting that he stepped down just prior to the beginning of the pandemic which altered the entertainment business landscape moving forward.
He is back in for his prior successor Bob Chapek who took over the captain’s chair at the beginning of 2020. Unfortunately for Bob, that was right as the Covid pandemic started, which would be an obstacle to the company’s performance in the years ahead. However, even after the pandemic slowed down and life returned to normal, Disney has been showing lackluster performance over the past few quarters.
According to CNN Business, “The company is coming off a lackluster earnings that showed growth for its streaming endeavors. However, that growth came at a great cost. Disney’s streaming business lost $1.5 billion in the fourth quarter.” Those losses were too much for Disney’s executive board to stomach so they decided it was time for a change of leadership. They opted for a proven commodity in Bob Iger and are hoping that he can restore the media and entertainment giants’ prior standing as the best-performing company in the industry.
Prior to the switch of leaders and after the company’s announcement of the $1.5 billion dollar loss. Disney saw its stock price per share plummeting in the stock market as investors were not confident in the company’s potential future performance. Bob Iger’s track record of performance success with Disney should at the very least stabilize the stock price ahead of any real performance data that would indicate whether the company is improving its financial health.
Bob Iger started immediately this past Sunday and got right to work reorganizing the company’s content distribution structure. In a memo to the entire company, Bob announced that Kareem Daniel will be leaving the company and relinquishing his chairman of the distribution unit position. According to CNN Business citing Bob Iger’s company memo, “without question, elements of DMED will remain, but I fundamentally believe that storytelling is what fuels this company, and it belongs at the center of how we organize our businesses.”
Bob Iger is not only intent on setting up Disney Media and Entertainment company for success by restructuring the organization but also about returning to the company’s inherent and foundational philosophy based on the stories they tell and how those stories are communicated to their audiences. Disney might be paying an insanely high price for this former leader but in the future if he produces similar results, instead of Bob Iger being referred to as one of the best CEO’s in the company’s history, the statement they might make could be Bob Iger is Disney’s best CEO since Walt Disney himself founded the company.
