Iger is believed to be richer than the Disney heir, Abigail Disney.
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Bob Iger is back in charge at Disney after less than a year of retirement.The House of Mouse boss stepped down as CEO in February 2020 but remained executive chairman until December 2021, when he left Disney completely.He started his career in a lowly position at ABC and spent over 40 years working at what’s now The Walt Disney Company. Iger was at the helm of the company during Disney’s acquisitions of Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and most recently, 21st Century Fox.Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Less than a year after he retired, Bob Iger is back as the CEO of Disney in a shocking shakeup.
On Sunday, Disney announced that Iger would be returning as CEO to replace Bob Chapek. Iger had stepped down as CEO in February 2020 but stayed on as executive chairman until December 2021, when he retired.
The change is effective immediately, and Iger will remain CEO for two years, during which time he will work with the Board to “set the strategic direction for renewed growth” and identify a successor.
Iger has amassed a sizeable personal fortune across his 15 years and counting as CEO. He made $47.5 million in total compensation in 2019 (with a base salary of $3 million), down from the $65.6 million he made in 2016, as chairman and CEO of Disney, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Iger started his entertainment career in 1974 as a studio supervisor at ABC and climbed up the show business ranks to lead one of the most powerful businesses in the world. Iger recounted this journey in his memoir “The Ride of a Lifetime,” in which he chronicled how he went from making $150 a week doing “menial labor” on ABC shows to earning over $60 million a year running The Walt Disney Company.
Forbes reported in 2019 that Iger had a net worth of $690 million, which is thought to be higher than that of Disney heiress Abigail Disney, who said that year that she’s worth about $120 million. Iger, meanwhile, was compensated $65.6 million in 2018 — which Forbes notes is 1,424 times what the average Disney employee makes.
Here’s what we know about Iger’s life and rise, including how he makes and spends his multimillion-dollar fortune:
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The 71-year-old business leader was CEO of Disney from 2005 to 2020. Iger stepped down as CEO that year but remained at Disney as executive chairman through the end of 2021, when he retired and was replaced by Bob Chapek.
On Sunday, however, Disney made the shocking announcement that Iger is back to lead the company.
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Forbes reported at the time that Iger’s net worth was actually higher than that of Abigail Disney, the Disney heiress, who said in 2019 that she was worth about $120 million.
In March 2020, it was announced that Iger would forgo his salary for the year, as Disney dealt with presumed multibillion-dollar losses due to the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent shutdowns. His base salary was $3 million in the previous fiscal year and he made $47.5 million in total compensation.
Oceanside High School
“I am very lucky,” Iger told Laurene Powell Jobs at The Atlantic Festival in Washington in 2019. “I was a lower middle class kid or middle class. My father had manic depression so he had trouble holding a job. I started as a $150-a-week employee at ABC 45 years ago and rose up to be CEO of this company. It is a great story, but it is not necessarily because I was extraordinary.”
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At Ithaca College, Iger hosted a campus television show called “Campus Probe.” He graduated, originally wanting to be a news anchor, and briefly worked as a local weatherman in Ithaca, New York.
But he quickly realized that being a news anchor was not going to work out for him.
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Iger wrote in his book that he got his first job at ABC because of his uncle, who was in the hospital for eye surgery. His uncle was in the room next to someone who claimed to be a top executive at ABC, who said he would give the younger Iger a job.
Iger took the “top executive” up on his offer, though he quickly realized that the person was not a “top executive” but instead a lower-level one. Still, the person ran a small department at ABC known as Production Services and was able to secure Iger an interview with the department.
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Iger has said that one of his bosses accused Iger of spreading rumors about him, causing the young Iger to almost be fired.
“He called me in and accused me of spreading rumors about him,” Iger recalled at the UCLA Awards Gala in 2013, “when I knew the rumors happened to be based in fact. He told me I wasn’t promotable and I had two weeks to find another job somewhere in the company or I was gone. Fortunately, I was able to find another job in the company. They didn’t think I wasn’t promotable, I guess.”
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Iger wrote in his book that Arledge was the person who taught him the mantra which would follow Iger for the rest of his life: “Innovate or die.”
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Iger wrote in his memoir that the constant traveling put strain on his first marriage, to Kathleen Susan. Eventually, the two divorced. They have two daughters.
Photo by Walt Disney Television via Getty Images Photo Archives/Walt Disney Television via Getty Images
The critically-acclaimed series was cancelled after two seasons, but Iger wrote in his book that the risk he took putting it on television caught the attention of other famed directors such as Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.
Iger and Lucas then developed a show based on the Indiana Jones franchise, which was cancelled after two seasons. But, Iger wrote in his book, Lucas never forgot the risk Iger took on his show, and he remembered it years later when he decided to sell Lucasfilm to Disney.
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Source: C-SPAN
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Iger and Bay became engaged in 1995. But after Disney agreed to buy Capital Cities/ABC that same year, Iger had quick decisions to make.
At that time, he wrote in his memoir, he had been commuting weekly to Los Angeles to meet his new Disney colleagues. He knew that after the acquisition was approved, he and Bay would not have much time to honeymoon. So, they quickly married later that same year.
“Willow and I also knew we’d have no chance for a honeymoon once the deal closed,” he wrote. “We radically shortened our engagement and got married in early October 1995.”
They are still married, living in Brentwood, California, and have two children together.
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Iger wrote in his memoir that he heavily considered walking away from Disney at this point. But as part of the Disney-ABC merger, Iger agreed to run a media division at Disney for five years.
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Forbes reported that between 1994 and 1999, Eisner made $631 million. In the year 1997 alone, Eisner reportedly made more than $550 million. Over the years, Eisner invested his Disney money and became a billionaire by 2008 — perhaps predicting the financial path Iger is well on his way to following.
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Iger wrote in his book that, despite being the COO and thereby second in command behind Eisner, his promotion to CEO was not a guarantee. If anything, he wrote, many had associated him with the turbulence of Eisner’s era and wanted an outsider for the job. Iger said he campaigned for months until he was officially named CEO in 2005.
Forbes reported in 2019 that in his first year as CEO, Iger made $22 million, a salary which did not include the stock options worth $2.9 million.
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Before he officially became the CEO of Disney, he called to let Steve Jobs — who was the majority shareholder in Pixar — know he was being appointed CEO and shared his hope they could discuss working together in the future. From there, the two began to slowly work on repairing the fraught relationship between the two companies.
Iger wrote in his memoir that he felt Disney needed Pixar to help enter the future of animation. Pixar at the time was using technologies to produce content that had never been seen before, Iger wrote in his book.
Iger wanted Disney to be in on it — not just as a distributor for the films, as their previous agreement had stated, but to actually own what Pixar was bringing to the table.
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Iger wrote in his book that the two companies were able to come together after he reached out to Jobs to forge a friendship and address any issues between the two companies.
Iger and Jobs would go on to have a long friendship until Jobs passed away in 2011. A month after Jobs died, Iger joined the Apple Board, where he remained until he stepped down in 2019 ahead of launching Disney+.
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Iger wrote that part of the reason Marvel CEO Ike Perlmutter was willing to sell the company was because Jobs called Perlmutter to “vouch for” Iger and praised how Iger had handled the Disney-Pixar merger.
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Iger said that he knew Lucas was nervous to sell Lucasfim to Disney — mostly because the “Star Wars” creator knew he would be selling his legacy along with it. But eventually, Lucas warmed up to the idea.
Lucas enlisted Kathleen Kennedy to lead Lucasfilm right before the company was sold to Disney. The first Star Wars film made without Lucas was released a few years later, in 2015 — “The Force Awakens,” directed by J.J Abrams.
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Forbes reported in 2019 that, if Murdoch were to cash in all stock available to him from the Disney deal, he’d own about $10.5 billion worth of Disney stock. In addition, Variety reported that collectively, the Murdoch family members were “the largest individual shareholders in Disney.”
Iger wrote in his memoir that Murdoch selling the company he had built from scratch was an indicator that the “disruption” threatening the entertainment industry was now inevitable.
“As [Rupert Murdoch] pondered the future of his company in such a disrupted world, he concluded the smartest thing to do was to sell and give his shareholders and his family a chance to convert its 21st Century Fox stock into Disney stock, believing we were better positioned to withstand the change and, combined, we’d be even stronger,” Iger wrote in his book.
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Source: Forbes, Business Insider
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“In a year when the tide has shifted against Big Business, Big Media and Big Tech, Iger has transformed his enormous media company into a gargantuan media and tech business while ensuring that the Walt Disney Co.’s products remain widely beloved,” Belinda Luscombe wrote in Time’s profile of him. “But for now, for just this moment, Iger is unassailable. He’s transformed his company from a stuffy media doyen into a sexy cultural force.”
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Source: The Walt Disney Company
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Iger was replaced by Bob Chapek, former chairman of Disney Parks, Experiences and Product. Iger would forgo his entire salary for the year, and Chapek would similarly take a 50% salary cut amid potential multibillion-dollar revenue losses due to the coronavirus pandemic, Business Insider’s Ashley Rodriguez reported.
AP
During his years as CEO, Iger grew Disney’s profits 335% to $260 billion, Business Insider reported.
Forbes also reports that under Iger, Disney created more than 70,000 new jobs.
“Literally, I have never heard one person say a bad thing about him and I have never seen him be mean,” billionaire David Geffen told The New York Times in a profile on Iger. “To be honorable, decent, smart, successful, and a terrific guy is unusual anywhere. But it is most unusual in the entertainment business. He’s in a category of one.”
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In 2019, Forbes reported that Iger’s net worth was a staggering $690 million, making him richer than the current Disney heir, Abigail Disney, who has said she’s worth about $120 million.
Forbes reported that that Iger’s fortune is split between his Disney shares “and cash or other investment from sales of Disney shares over the decades.”
According to Forbes, Iger was compensated $65.6 million in 2018, which is 1,424 times the average Disney employee’s salary. He had been given another $26.3 million in stock after he successfully closed the Disney-Fox merger and for agreeing to extend his contract until 2021. His initial compensation in 2018 was $39.3 million (not including stock rewards).
In April 2019, Abigail Disney publicly criticized Iger’s high pay on Twitter and later wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post elaborating on her thoughts.
“I’m not arguing that Iger and others do not deserve bonuses. They do,” Disney wrote. “They have led the company brilliantly. I am saying that the people who contribute to its success also deserve a share of the profits they have helped make happen.”
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He and his wife bought a home in Brentwood, California, in 2006 from actress Michelle Pfeiffer for about $19 million, the Orlando Sentinel reported that year.
The home is 7,500 square feet and has five bedrooms with nine bathrooms, with a guest house, a tennis court, and a pool. As of a 2018 interview with Vogue, Iger was still living in Brentwood with his wife and their two children.
Courtesy of Stribling
The Igers’ former home has a library, living room views of the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir in Central Park, and four bedrooms, including one master suite with two bathrooms and a walk-in closet.
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Iger has also said that he doesn’t eat carbs unless it’s pizza, recalling that during his high school years, he worked at his local Pizza Hut.
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Variety reports that in 2019, Iger attended the conference along with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Shari Redstone, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, and even former Democratic presidential candidate John Hickenlooper.
Source: Business Insider
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The scholarship was funded through the proceeds from Iger’s memoir.
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“We vacationed at adjacent Hawaiian hotels a few times and would meet and take long walks on the beach, talking about our wives and kids, about music, about Apple and Disney and the things we might still do together,” he wrote in his book. “You don’t expect to develop such close friendships late in life, but when I think back on my time as CEO — at the things I’m most grateful for and surprised by — my relationship with Steve is one of them.”
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Geffen owns a megayacht, known to be a common hang-out spot for celebrities and fellow billionaires, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, during the summer months, as seen on his Instagram page.
As previously reported by Business Insider, the yacht is worth $590 million.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
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“I’ll tell you the truth, this is not really where I intended to be tonight,” Winfrey said at the Centennial Awards, where Iger was being honored, in 2019. “I was hoping that by this time in early fall, I would be knocking on doors in Des Moines, wearing an ‘Iger 2020’ T-shirt. Because I really do believe that Bob Iger’s guidance and decency is exactly what the country needs right now.”
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After Comcast bought Dreamworks in 2016 for $3.8 billion, Katzenberg’s net worth rose to $900 million.
Iger and Katzenberg have been friends for years, and Katzenberg is among the group of people who tried to encourage the Disney CEO to run for president.
“No matter how much I begged Bob,” Katzenberg said while presenting the Simon Wiesenthal Center Humanitarian Award to Iger in 2019. “He just wasn’t willing to run for president of the United States.”
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“I think the Democratic Party would brand me as just another rich guy who’s out of touch with America who doesn’t have any sense for what’s good for the plight of the people,” he told The New York Times in a 2019 profile.
Despite many people — including some major Hollywood players — urging him to run for president in late 2019, Iger publicly remained firm that he had no plans to pursue a presidential campaign.
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Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum was a business council created to hear the perspectives of different leaders on how to improve job growth in the US.
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Iger announced his resignation from the council in a tweet stating: “As a matter of principle, I’ve resigned from the President’s Council over the #Paris Agreement withdrawal.”
The council, which has now completely disbanded, also included JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, and Stephen A. Schwarzman, the cofounder of private equity firm Blackstone.
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“America is gravely in need of optimism, of looking at the future and believing that so many things are going to be all right, or that we as a nation can attack some of the most critical problems of our day,” Iger said at The Atlantic Festival in Washington in 2019. “And that could be the environment, that could be income disparity, that could be the technology’s impact on the world from a disruption perspective. It could be the cost of education, availability of affordable housing, healthcare. You name it.”