Why Disney brought back Bob Iger and booted his replacement.
Bob Iger is back as Disney CEO. Here's how we got to his stunning return.
In a twist worthy of a Hollywood screenplay, the board of the Walt Disney Company ousted CEO Bob Chapek on Sunday and replaced him with a familiar face: Bob Iger, who ran the entertainment giant for 15 years and stepped aside two years ago.
Iger is widely considered entertainment industry royalty, celebrated for his management acumen and creative chops. He turned Disney into a global powerhouse by acquiring marquee brands such as Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm and 21st Century Fox.
In contrast, Chapek's tenure at the helm of Disney was rocky, starting off with the turmoil of the pandemic and culminating this month in a dismal fourth-quarter earnings report that rattled Wall Street. (He did not immediately respond to requests for comment.)
How did we get here?
Chapek took the reins at Disney in the early days of the pandemic, an unprecedented calamity that forced him to close the company's world-famous theme parks, pull blockbuster movies from multiplexes and shut down other operations.
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