My inbox is full of messages from media moguls, execs and other insiders speculating about the Disney board’s move to usher out COO Tom Staggs after priming him for the past year to be the successor to CEO Bob Iger.
A week-plus after the sudden announcement even veteran observers are still bewildered at the spot Disney has put itself in — and wondering what it’s going to do.
The board is staring at two years left on Iger’s contract with no obvious candidate to take over a phenomenally complex global media company.
This mogul wagged his finger at me for even thinking that Peter Chernin could be a possible replacement. At 64, Chernin is the same age as Iger, and disqualified for that reason, he said.
A former Disney executive called the prospect of bringing in an outsider a “kiss of death,” pointing to history. Michael Ovitz, who served as Michael Eisner‘s president from 1995 to 1997, was an unmitigated disaster. Veteran Disney-ites were happy to leak the $1 million renovation cost on Ovitz’s office before practically driving him off the lot as an intruder from over the Mulholland pass.
Before Ovitz, Geraldine Laybourne found no love as president of Disney-ABC Cable Networks. She left two years after a 24-hour news cable channel didn’t launch. In more recent times, marketing executive MT Carney — picked by Rich Ross — was similarly rejected as an outsider from (horrors) England!
The single most qualified candidate who does not currently work at Disney already has a CEO job — Steve Burke, the CEO of NBCUniversal. Burke knows Disney well. He worked there for a decade, developing the Disney stores, running EuroDisney at its launch and then taking on ABC. Still in his 50s, he’s young enough for the job, runs a global media company that has film and TV divisions as well as theme parks. He may find the job appealing, but he may not.
After him there’s…. pretty much nobody. (But that doesn’t mean the board couldn’t take a leap of faith with someone like Sheryl Sandberg, who lacks content experience but is a top executive and on the Disney board.)
Disney has such a distinctive culture, it requires the nurturing of that knowledge over time and from within. Staggs had done that but obviously did not please the board with his performance in the past year as COO.
Some have speculated why Staggs did not wait out the process. The board informed him that they were expanding their search, but did not tell him he would not get the job. Several have reminded me that Iger was required to wait patiently through the board’s lengthy, vigorous search process when he was No.2 before finally landing the top job.
Not everybody agreed that Staggs didn’t have the stomach to wait. “Ridiculous,” another mogul told me. “They were in a succession process. He ran a race against (former CFO) Jay Rasulo and beat him. He came up a winner. More likely is he had the COO job for a year and in that period of time whatever it was that the board was looking for they didn’t get.”
James Stewart, writing in the New York Times last week, posited that given the limited window before Iger’s contract is up, the Disney board will have no choice but to beg him to stay on beyond when his contract expires in June 2018.
That definitely seems like an option, since Iger is in excellent shape for his 64 years, and still has two children at home who can keep him connected to popular culture trends.
Still another Wall Street expert said that the uncertainty around succession makes Disney a target for acquisition. With a $155 billion market cap, there are only a couple of companies that could swallow that big a fish, and they’re all up north of Burbank.
It’s an open question whether Apple, which is still searching for a content strategy, or Facebook, which has lots of cash and wants to be a content player, might eye Disney as an acquisition target.
But clearly, the board has some work to do.
Disney CEO Search: Could Sheryl Sandberg, Peter Chernin, Barack Obama Replace Bob Iger?
The list of who could run Disney in place of Bob Iger is shockingly short. The job of running a multi-tiered, highly diversified global entertainment company requires a rare mix of fiscal discipline, risk-taking and artistic creativity. Here's who might be up for it.
Sheryl Sandberg
The COO of Facebook would need a big inducement to leave her stock package behind, but Sandberg – who brought her kids to the “Star Wars” premiere – might be ready for a change. Having suddenly lost her husband last year, she might be ready for a move from Silicon Valley. And having sat on the Disney board since 2009, she knows the company well. She has the rare combination of strong interpersonal skills, creative thinking and management discipline that the Disney job requires.
Steve Burke
The CEO and President of NBCUniversal may be the most qualified person to take the reins from Bob Iger. He runs a media company that like Disney has a film unit, a tv network and a theme park. And at 57, he's young enough to take the gig. Only problem is: he already runs a global entertainment company, why switch?
Jack Dorsey
Already the CEO of two public companies, Square and Twitter, Dorsey is a Disney board member with a flair for creative thinking, risk-taking and a take-no-prisoners attitude to innovation. Is he too young and untested for a gig like this? Wall Street will probably think so. But he’d be a ballsy choice, and it would give Dorsey a chance to leverage all he knows about social media with online commerce against the storied brand.
Anne Sweeney
The former chief of ABC left Disney after learning she wouldn’t get the top job, but that doesn’t mean she should be counted out. She’s a formidable executive, with deep knowledge of the company’s culture. Downside? She said she wanted to direct.
Peter Chernin
Rupert Murdoch's former No. 2 left News Corp. because he knew he’d never have the top job. He has a superb combination of experience running a global media company, taking big risks with technology investments (even if MySpace didn’t work out so well) and hiring excellent executives for entertainment divisions that mirror many – though not all – of Disney’s. Chernin’s age, 64, argues against him, and God knows he’s making plenty of money through his movie-producing gigs and his investment vehicle, The Chernin Group. But he's a strong contender in a very limited field.
Chase Carey
Carey is a candidate similar to Chernin but without his former colleague’s flair. He is known as a top operator rather than a risk-taker. That said, he has rare experience running a global media company in the digital age. Did we say Hulu?
Kathleen Kennedy
The President of Lucasfilm, creator of Disney-owned “Star Wars,” is hugely respected by the film industry and well-liked within Disney. Kennedy has no experience running a multi-billion-dollar media company, but she successfully relaunched Disney’s most exciting film franchise and worked with Steven Spielberg on “E.T.,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “Jurassic Park.”
Reed Hastings
The founder of Netflix is an unlikely choice to run Disney, but think about it: His company has arisen as the most formidable challenger to traditional movie companies. And as ESPN subscription numbers show, streaming is Disney’s greatest weakness. Hastings can run a multi-billion-dollar company, and in fact he already does.
Jeff Weiner
The CEO of LinkedIn is a former Warner Bros. executive who has grown up to be one of the most exciting business leaders in America. His maturation as a leader is all the more impressive because he did it in the harsh glare of a tech bubble. Weiner successfully took the professional social network public and might well be ready to take all he learned in Silicon Valley to Hollywood. They’d be lucky to have him.
Barack Obama
The president will be available and open for job offers starting in January 2017, coincidentally just months before Bob Iger needs to bow out, stage left. Would the president be interested in living in California? Joining the private sector? Running the Magic Kingdom? It would be just the kind of challenge that the “no drama” leader of the free world might find to his liking after the rough treatment he received in the White House.
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Those qualified to replace Bob Iger as Disney CEO are limited to the top-tier of American executives — including Sheryl Sandberg and Barack Obama
The list of who could run Disney in place of Bob Iger is shockingly short. The job of running a multi-tiered, highly diversified global entertainment company requires a rare mix of fiscal discipline, risk-taking and artistic creativity. Here's who might be up for it.
