After firing Peter Rice, director of entertainment content, the board renews the company’s current CEO for another three years in search of subscribers for its platforms.
Bob Chapek must feel like Aladdin during his triumphal entry into Ágrabah after the Walt Disney Board of Directors announced this week that it is renewing his term as CEO until 2025. He, a man of the house who took office in February 2020, following the resignation of Bob Iger, who had served as president and CEO for the past 15 years.
Pandemic in between, “since then, Mr. Chapek has delivered results that have exceeded Wall Street’s expectations. And more importantly, his team has managed to keep Disney+ growing at a much faster rate than expected; the streaming service added nearly 20 million new subscribers worldwide in Disney’s last two fiscal quarters, about 60% more than analysts had forecast,” Brooks Barnes wrote in The New York Times on June 28. .
Since taking the reins, however, Disney’s stock has lost around 35% on the stock market, although in March 2021 it set an all-time high of $201.9. Even so, only so far this year, the title has plummeted around 40%.
According to the New York newspaper, there are several main reasons why the stock of the American company is in low hours. On the one hand, investors’ fear of soaring inflation and a possible recession, as well as the war in Ukraine and the drop in the number of Netflix subscribers for the first time in a decade, which affected the entire audiovisual sector.
But Barnes says that the lukewarm response of Chapek and Disney to the new Education Law in Florida also had its impact on the parquet floor, tarnishing the image of the company for some and provoking the protest of some employees. The Law, popularly known as Don’t Say Gay, prohibits talking about sexual orientation and gender identity from kindergarten to third grade. When Chapek finally spoke out against the rule, he unleashed the wrath of Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, who.
A lifetime at Disney
Bob Chapek was born in Chicago in 1960, and between his training he has a degree in Microbiology from Indiana University Bloomington and an MBA from Michigan State University.
Before becoming the seventh CEO in the company’s history, and throughout his nearly thirty years with the company, Chapek was president of the Disney Parks, Experiences and Products division since the area’s inception in 2018, and before that he had been the chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts since 2015.
Under his command, the current CEO then had the six amusement parks in Europe, the US and Asia, a cruise line, hotels and a program of guided family adventures; But he was also in charge of consumer products: the licenses for toys, clothing, home goods, digital games and apps, the world’s largest children’s print publisher, Disney stores and the shopDisney e-commerce platform.
During this time, the opening of the Shanghai amusement park and tourist complex took place, the expansion of the Disney cruise fleet and the integration of the Star Wars and Marvel franchises into the parks.
In the statement announcing the renewal of Chapek, Susan Arnold, president of the council, highlighted that despite the pandemic, “with Bob at the helm, our companies – from parks to streaming – have not only weathered the storm, but that have been strengthened”. However, its continuity would have had victims.
“Chapek’s contract renewal by the board of directors came just weeks after the board issued a rare statement of support for the boss after he fired Peter Rice, the company’s top television executive. Some in Hollywood saw Rice’s firing as an effort to eliminate a contender for Chapek’s job,” the Financial Times reported just a few days ago.
“Rice was one of the company’s top executives, tasked with managing a $10 billion annual budget and overseeing some 300 television shows,” The Wall Street Journal reported in June.
“In certain corners of Disney, Mr. Rice was seen as a dissatisfied man who could patronize his colleagues, acting more as if he ran his own fiefdom than a good corporate soldier,” the financial daily reported. Some Disney executives said that they felt that Mr. Rice was not as transparent as they wanted in the way he allocated financial resources. To other sources, the Journal noted, Rice was “a passionate executive who fought fiercely for his creative team.” Only time will tell if his firing was a wise move or it ended up being Chapek’s biggest mistake, handing Rice over to the enemy.
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