Disney Says It Will
Hire a New C.E.O. in ‘Early 2026’
In
a board shake-up, James Gorman, a director in charge of planning for a
successor to the chief executive, Robert A. Iger,
will become chairman on Jan. 2, 2025.
Disney
said on Monday that it would name a new chief executive in “early 2026,” which
is later than many in Hollywood had expected.
The
timeline — the first Disney has described publicly — came as part of a board
shake-up. James P. Gorman, a veteran Wall Street banker who joined the board in
February, will become Disney’s chairman on Jan. 2, 2025, the company said. He
will replace Mark G. Parker, who will step down after two years in the role and
leave the Disney board entirely.
“A
critical priority before us is to appoint a new C.E.O., which we now expect to announce
in early 2026,” Mr. Gorman said in a statement. “This timing reflects the
progress the succession planning committee and the board are making and will
allow ample time for a successful transition.”
In
August, Disney’s board put Mr. Gorman in charge of finding a successor to
Robert A. Iger, 73, who came out of retirement in
late 2022 to retake Disney’s reins. The board rehired Mr. Iger
after it fired Bob Chapek, Mr. Iger’s
handpicked successor.
Mr.
Iger has publicly said he is “definitely” leaving when
his contract expires on Dec. 31, 2026, a vow some people inside and outside of
Disney have viewed with skepticism. During his
earlier, 15-year stint as Disney’s chief executive, Mr. Iger
delayed his retirement four times and seemed reluctant to leave when he did.
The
Disney board and Mr. Iger are widely viewed as having
botched the selection of Mr. Chapek, who had been
running the Disney theme parks. The board never interviewed Mr. Chapek, and Mr. Iger soon turned
on him, leading to a power struggle just as Disney was contending with the
pandemic and the entertainment industry’s shift to streaming. Disney has been
hit with multiple shareholder lawsuits related to Mr. Chapek’s
tenure.
This
time, four division leaders at Disney are vying to succeed Mr. Iger. They are Dana Walden, Disney’s top television
executive; Josh D’Amaro, who runs theme parks and
video games; Alan Bergman, Disney’s movie chief; and Jimmy Pitaro,
whose fief is ESPN.
The
question of whether any of those executives will ascend to the top job has
captivated Hollywood since Disney announced in January 2023 that it had formed
a succession planning committee. In recent weeks, chatter in the gossipy
entertainment industry has escalated, with people speculating one day that Ms.
Walden had already won the race, and the next day that Mr. D’Amaro
was instead the choice, perhaps with Ms. Walden as chief creative officer.
The
2026 timeline given by Mr. Gorman may be designed to cool the rumor mill and refocus Disney employees on their work. The
Disney board reiterated on Monday that external candidates are also being
“reviewed.”
Mr.
Gorman ran Morgan Stanley, the investment bank, from 2010 until last year. He
remains the bank’s executive chairman, a role that ends in December. He was
recruited to serve on the Disney board as part of Mr. Iger’s
response to attacks from activist investors — one of whom, Nelson Peltz,
harshly criticized the company for slipshod succession planning.
Mr.
Gorman has won praise across corporate America for how he managed the succession
process at Morgan Stanley. It was an unusually public three-way race that Mr.
Gorman once jokingly compared to the cutthroat television series “Succession.”
Mr.
Parker, Disney’s current chairman, indicated in a statement that he needed to
focus attention on the troubles at Nike, which he ran from 2006 to 2020 and
where he remains executive chairman. He was recruited to the Disney board in
2016, when Mr. Iger served as both chairman and chief
executive. The board asked Mr. Parker to consider serving as interim chief
executive in 2022, when Mr. Chapek was struggling
with internal discord over a restructuring and the consequences of a political
battle with Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. Mr. Parker declined, citing his Nike
workload.