Iger said that in an emergency like this, he had no choice but to return to the helmESPN IMAGES
Disney Exec Chair BOB IGER has "effectively returned to running the company" amid the pandemic, as after a few weeks of letting new CEO BOB CHAPEK take charge, Iger "smoothly reasserted control," according to Ben Smith of the N.Y. TIMES. Iger now is "intensely focused on remaking a company that will emerge, he believes, deeply changed by the crisis." For Iger, that means a Disney with "fewer employees, leading the new and uncertain business of how to gather people safely for entertainment." The company is losing as much as $30M or more a day, and it borrowed $6B at the end of March, a "sign both of its desperate plight and lenders’ confidence that it could rebound." Iger said that in an emergency like this, he had "no choice but to abandon his plan to pull back." Iger in an email wrote, "A crisis of this magnitude, and its impact on Disney, would necessarily result in my actively helping Bob and the company contend with it, particularly since I ran the company for 15 years!” Iger has told his associates that he also sees this as a moment to "look across the business and permanently change how it operates," telling them that he "anticipates ending expensive old-school television practices like advertising upfronts" (N.Y. TIMES, 4/13).
