Bloomberg Talks: Disney Chairman James Gorman on Bob Iger's Successor Josh D'Amaro | Big Take

Well, it's Josh D'Amaro, but good morning, Ed. Listen, he's a fantastic executive. He's strategic. He's run a huge operations with one which Disney is now investing $60 billion of capital into. He has great creative instincts. He has what Bob Iger calls exceptional taste. He's a leader who's operated all over the globe, including the recent expansion that's going to happen in the UAE, which he did with Bob. He's the person for this time. So Josh is just a standout executive. We looked all over the world, as you could imagine. We wanted to do this right. We wanted to make sure that whoever got the job beat all comers, and he beat all comers. So we're thrilled.

Well, we haven't set goals in terms of his contract. He hasn't started. He'll be taking over as CEO at the annual meeting which is March 18. Bob will be working with him through 2026, guiding and mentoring and helping further develop him. Obviously, he laid out a vision for the board in the various discussions we had, which we had numerous ones. We really got to know Josh and all the other top executives, Dana Walden, Alan Bergman, Jimmy Pitaro, just a tremendous group of four executives we had to consider in this process. And you know, over time we'll work with him as he settles into the job to lay out what the right strategic moves will be and how we're going to measure ourselves against those. So I'm highly confident in Josh and the team working with him.

Yeah, I think firstly, let's just talk about Bob. I mean, he's had effectively two careers at Disney. The first was an amazing 15-year run where he did deals that, you know, nobody else on the planet could have done. Frankly, he worked with Steve Jobs, with George Lucas, with Rupert Murdoch to buy a bunch of studios which we now oversee. Seven studios which Alan Bergman has been overseeing, by the way, produced under Alan's leadership and working with Dana and has produced over $6 billion in movies in the last two years. But Bob did a phenomenal job when the company got in trouble and it was before I joined the board. They invited Bob to come back and really there were two mandates for him. One was to get us through the very difficult post-COVID period and the changes taking place in the linear space with what was going on in streaming and now what is going on in AI. He did that. He really got the company fit for purpose. The second was to make sure if we were to go internal that the lead executives, and we had four of them to consider, would be ready for prime time if and when we went in that direction. We ultimately did. So Bob came to us a little while ago and said they're ready. I mean, Josh is ready. He's ready to take over. If the board's will is to move on this, I want to step aside and I want to work with Josh as a senior adviser, stay on the board through the end of the year. It's not about the length of the contract that he was under. It's about his role as CEO and then as mentor for the next CEO. So hats off to Bob. It was very selfless and frankly, it's what's great for the company.

Yeah. Bob will stay as an employee advisor and board member until the end of 2026 and then he'll step off the board. He won't be an employee. He'll continue to consult to the company consistent with what former executives do. I'm doing that at my former institution, Morgan Stanley. But no, we were not, you know, Bob was not interested in remaining as a chair or co-chair. We needed a completely clean start here, which is what we're having. He'll be there to support and mentor and we have the right structure for the future. So, we're thrilled and you know, you look at what's going on now that we've appointed Dana also as president and a new role, chief creative officer. That's to ensure that the leadership team at the heart of this company is creativity and storytelling. And it's to ensure the leadership team brings their absolute best every day, leveraging our IP, telling stories across all of our properties, whether it's cruises or parks, our TV, our ESPN platform, and obviously the studios. So, we're really set. We're set for the next decade. I'm very excited about it.

Oh my goodness. If you don't want to keep talented executives, there's something wrong with you. You know, we had an embarrassment of riches. We have, you know, as I said, Jimmy Pitaro, who's run ESPN, is a fabulous executive. Alan Bergman, who's run our studios businesses at seven studios, has done an unbelievable job. Dana, obviously, incredible executive with a long history in Hollywood in the industry and Josh, we want to keep all of them and I believe we will. I mean, I think this is a win-win for everybody and I'm just, I couldn't be more excited about it. So yeah, absolutely, if you have talent you want to keep them. Finding talent, developing talent is really hard. So when you got it you do what you can to retain it.

Well, it was more than four ways. We really approached this. And when I say we, the board, we had a succession planning committee and I was honored to serve with Calvin McDonald, Sir Jeremy Darroch and Mary Barra who were the succession planning committee. Then we quickly moved to full board engagement and each of the other directors played a meaningful role in this and I couldn't be more grateful for what they did. But you know, we decided early on we wanted to look at all comers. We had a list, my goodness, it must have been over 100 people initially that we thought about, we considered, we evaluated. We ended up talking to several executives outside the company because I wanted to be sure, we all wanted to be sure that whoever got this job got it on their merits. This was, they had beaten anything that was presented from the marketplace and we had the best possible candidate. So that included external, it included internal, it included the four that you talked about and I think all of them are very important to this company and we're honored to have them in critical roles.

Not especially. We look at the individual. We don't look at, you know, just bios or whatever. I mean, you've got to look at what the individual has done. Josh is incredibly innovative. What he's done in the imagineering space with those creative teams, building the IP into the parks, into the cruises. I mean, this is not an operations job. This is an operations and a creative job. It's telling stories that create incredible experiences for everybody who goes through those gates or gets on one of the ships. And he is incredibly capable at doing that. So, I've always said what you look for in CEOs is not just what they've done, that's important, but it's what they're capable of doing. You know, I tell the story, I ran Morgan Stanley for 14 years. I'd never been a trader. I'd never been a banker. You know, you take people for what they can do, building on some of the things they've learned in the process. And I, you know, I look at Josh as an individual, not as a comparison. And I think he'll be a fabulous CEO. He has all of the skills to lead Disney for the next 10 years.

Suggesting I retire?

No, I'm not, I mean, I work with General Atlantic, which is an amazing firm in the financial space, but I'm not interested in going back into the pure world of finance. I want to help the Walt Disney Company and help Josh and the new leadership team and work with Bob on this transition and help the board in making sure we deliver what we can. This company's trading at 15 times earnings. That's nuts. I mean, honestly, there are very few companies that have this quality of assets, this quality of bones as I call it, than what we have. There are tremendous moats around the businesses. I'm excited about the prospect of what we can see from Disney over the next several years. So, no, I'm very much staying put. Thank you.

Thanks so much.