“The Sleeping Beauty Castle”: The famous castle in Disneyland in Anaheim, California Bild: AP
The old and new head of the entertainment group is reducing staff – and is accommodating a loud critic.
Barely three months following his return to the helm of entertainment company Walt Disney, Bob Iger has announced a series of major changes. When presenting business results, he announced that he wanted to cut 7,000 jobs. This corresponds to a little more than 3 percent of the workforce of around 220,000 employees. Iger also announced a new corporate structure. With these and other steps, he also reconciled the investor Nelson Peltz, who conducted a high-profile campaign once morest the company and demanded a seat on the board of directors. Peltz declared his campaign over on Thursday. Disney’s business figures were slightly above expectations, even if the group once more reported a billion-dollar loss in its streaming business. The stock market reacted positively to all the news, with the share price rising 2 percent in trading on Thursday to $114.
Disney surprisingly replaced Bob Chapek as CEO in November, who had held the post for less than three years. It was similarly unexpected that his successor was also his predecessor and Disney brought back Bob Iger, who had led the company from 2005 to 2020. He will now be at the helm for another two years. The main reason for the change in leadership was the high losses in the streaming division for the Disney+ service. Disney+ is considered a success story and has become one of Netflix’s biggest competitors. But growth has come at a cost, and profits are a long way off. The 71-year-old Iger was given an additional challenge soon following taking over when Nelson Peltz set his sights on the company. The investor described Disney as a crisis. He accused the group of a lack of cost discipline and strategic mistakes in the streaming business. Some of his criticisms were also aimed at Iger. He said Iger’s takeover of competitor 21st Century Fox three years ago was too expensive.
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What: FAZ
