Bob Iger has made it clear that Isaac “Ike” Perlmutter would have been removed from his position at The Walt Disney Co, regardless of his involvement in Nelson Peltz’s activism earlier this year.
Iger discussed the hot topic with TIME during his cover interview for the magazine’s annual Time 100 Most Influential People issue. The Disney CEO said: “This was a necessary step in the direction of us creating a more efficient company. “I’d rather not get into details about this one. …There was redundancy specific to the way Marvel was being managed,” Once pressed to disclose whether the firing had anything to do with Perlmutter’s involvement with Peltz, he said: “This decision would have been made regardless of that.”
Perlmutter, the former chairman of Marvel Entertainment, was shown the door by Disney last month, as they began their staff overhaul seeking to cut 7,000 jobs and a $5.5 billion cut in costs. The company closed off his division and rerouted its responsibilities into other departments.
After his termination, Perlmutter gave a statement saying: “I have long expected that my working relationship with Disney would end. That it should come as a result of my trying to help Disney improve its business should sadden many shareholders as it does me, the company’s largest individual shareholder.”
During his TIME interview, Iger also discussed Disney’s ongoing feud with the state of Florida.
The state’s Reedy Creek Improvement District, which was established to create Disney World, lost its powers over Walt Disney World when the state’s governor Ron DeSantis and legislature intervened. However, before the move could play out, Reedy Creek had already handed most of its power back to Disney, leading many to believe that the company had outmaneuvered the governor.
Iger took a more cautious approach to the situation and said that he would happily sit down with DeSantis and discuss the district.
He said: “I do not view this as a going-to-mattresses situation for us. If the governor of Florida wants to meet with me to discuss all of this, of course, I would be glad to do that. You know, I’m one that typically has respected our elected officials and the responsibility that they have, and there would be no reason why I wouldn’t do that.”
In the same breath, however, Iger reminded everyone that Disney World brings enormous value to Florida, and his company will continue to invest in the tourist attraction.
He said: “Disney World opened just over 50 years ago. It was the vision and the dream of Walt Disney, probably the most ambitious thing he ever did—turning swampland in Central Florida into a business that employs over 75,000 people, that is visited by tens of millions of people every year, that is a major tourist destination in the United States, and for the state of Florida, that creates huge value for our company and its employees, and for the state of Florida itself.”
The Disney CEO added: “Our sole goal in Florida is to continue creating that value for all those constituencies. All we want is a relationship with the state that enables us to continue to do that. We have the wherewithal and we have the desire to continue to invest there to grow that business so that we can hire more people, we can increase our attendance, and we can basically increase more value for the Walt Disney Company and for the state of Florida. It’s that simple.”
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Regarding his future approach for ESPN, Iger said that he is open to exploring the company’s options for a partnership with a sports betting company, as that would help grow Disney’s sports division. This is a shift from the stance he had in his first tenure as CEO. He said:
“I was probably on the more conservative side about this for a long time. But I’ve changed because I think the acceptance of sports betting has grown significantly,”
Iger added: “And my desire is to see that the company continues to serve its consumers well, without us really, I think, distancing ourselves from values, because we’re not actually causing the bets to be made. We’re just enabling people to link to companies that do that.”
Over the impending ownership decision regarding Hulu, Iger said: Comcast has “the right to put their piece [of Hulu] to us, in other words, force us to buy them out. If they decide to do that, then we have no choice but to buy them out.” The joint owners of the streaming business have until early next year to exercise their put-call option.
Iger returned in November with a two-year contract, replacing Bob Chapek. In response to how the company plans to handle succession this time around, Iger said: “[It] will get more time, more attention, more focus than it did before. We’ve always viewed it as an important decision. But given the fact that I’m not here forever and we had some difficulties these last couple of years, it’s getting more attention than it has in the past.”
