Biography | Bob Chapek — The Sunday Night the Board Brought Iger Back

People treat a three-year contract extension as a settled succession.

Disney's board tore that up on a Sunday night.

On 20 November 2022 the directors removed Chapek as chief executive and named Bob Iger to return, effective immediately.

Board chair Susan Arnold thanked Chapek for a long career that included steering the company through the pandemic.

The public trigger was the 8 November earnings report.

Streaming losses of about 1.5 billion dollars in that quarter, and a call that several senior executives treated as a loss of the room, reached the board within days.

Iger had already left the chief executive role in February 2020 and the executive chairman role at the end of 2021.

The board gave him a two-year contract to stabilize the company and prepare another successor.

Chapek had spent twenty-nine years at Disney, from VHS marketing in 1993 to the seventh chief executive in the company's history.

The same Burbank lot that announced his promotion announced his exit.

He later joined the board of the medical-technology firm Masimo in January 2024.

The Disney chapter ends at 500 South Buena Vista Street.

Photo: elisfkc2, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (Chapek at Walt Disney World, 3 February 2020)