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I'm Ed Baxter and I'm Denise Pellegrini on this weekend edition of Bloomberg Best.
我是 Ed Baxter,这是布隆伯格最佳周末版节目。还有我的搭档 Denise Pellegrini。
I wanted to make sure I was there for him to help him through what is obviously particularly challenging time. Bob Iger on handing over the reins during a pandemic. Get a job on camera, work the way up from there, all the way to possibly becoming a network anchor man. Albert Walt Disney executives career began as on-air talent.
I gave it some serious thought. Actually, post the election of Donald Trump, I gave it a lot of thought. And Iger for president, all this and more coming up in the next hour of Bloomberg Best.
All right. And if there's anybody associated with Walt Disney besides Walt Disney himself and of course Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, that person is Bob Iger. Yeah. Denise and you know, he's still executive chairman of the company.
Now, we had a chance to hear from him in depth on the David Rubinstein show, peer-to-peer conversations. And Iger talks about how hard it's been to separate himself from Disney's, his role changes and also about his political ambitions.
David begins here by asking Iger about his long and successful run at the world's most well-known media giant.
David问艾格有关他在全球最知名媒体巨头担任长期成功领导的一些问题。
During the time that you were the CEO, the stock market value of the company went up about 40, 450 percent. And the market capitalization about 400 percent during that 15 year period of time.
So my big regret is that I didn't back you and buy stock. But you must be very pleased with what you accomplished in the 15 years that you were the CEO.
Yes. A proud would probably be the right word to use. You know, I inherited a company that was renowned and had been quite successful, but also had gone through a period of difficulty on a variety of levels. And there was a lot of work to do. And my sole goal was to not only improve the lot of the company, but to ultimately leave the company in great hands for my successor.
But you weren't as successful in leaving the company because you had wanted to leave a few years earlier and then the board said, no, you got to stay longer because you did the Fox acquisition among other things. So why were you so good at running the company, but not so good at leaving the company?
I'm told that that's a common ailment of CEOs that have had decent tenure. And so I failed leaving a few times. The first time we had had a succession process that didn't work out as we had hoped. And so I agreed to stay on a little bit longer. And then the last time was solely due to the largest acquisition that we'd ever made. And that was most of the assets of 21st century Fox. And I knew when I proposed doing that to the board, which was, you know, close to when I was supposed to step down that they would say, well, we will support you in this effort as long as you agreed to stay. And we would not want them for good reason to go through a CEO transition just at the time we were making the biggest acquisition we'd ever made.
It was rumored in the press and in your book that you were thinking of leaving Disney to run for president of the United States. So whoever heard of a businessman running for president of the United States. So where did you get that idea from?
Well, there was some truth to that. Both before the 16 election and then after the 16 election, I gave it some serious thought actually post the election of Donald Trump. I gave it a lot of thought and actually did a fair amount of homework to study the feasibility of it. And I'm not sure I would have gotten as far as actually running because as the realist in me was sinking in, I was starting to think more and more about how difficult the path might be in the Democratic party for a businessman to actually get the nomination.
What would you say is the chance that you would be interested in serving in a senior position in a Biden administration? Would that be something of any interest to you? Or you wouldn't want to come to Washington for that kind of thing?
Well, I've always thought about what the next chapter in my life might be post Disney because there will be a post Disney soon. I'm not going to fail stepping down again. And giving back in some fashion, serving our country in some fashion is certainly something that I would consider seriously, but a lot of it would depend on what it is, what the opportunity is and whether I thought it would be something that I would both be stimulated by and and be good at.
So let's go back to the Disney situation. You announced that you're going to step down finally at the end of 2019, become executive chair and then COVID hit comes along and did COVID make it possible for you to leave as the same way you thought you were going to be able to leave or do you have to spend more time at Disney when COVID hit?
Well, what actually happened was I stepped down from the CEO position as you mentioned to become executive chairman and to focus all of my time and energy on our creative process because I thought obviously what we create is the most valuable product that we have. I thought that the best thing I could do in terms of enabling my successor to succeeded the job would to hand him a very, very rich pipeline of great creativity.
And in fact, I have spent almost all of my time since I stepped into this role doing just that. However, I also wanted to make sure he was successful in in other respects as well. And he had not handled a crisis that was anything like this by the way, nor had I. And so I, you know, I wanted to make sure I was there for him to help him through what is obviously particularly challenging time not only for the world, but very specifically for our company. And I've done just that so he's been the CEO, he's been running the company from the day he stepped into that role.
I feel confident that he is doing a good job and will do a good job into the future. And I've probably been there for them a little bit more than I might have expected. I think one of the hardest things is in passing the baton on to someone else, you know, you expect that you're going to spend some in a situation where I was going to continue as an employee and executive of the company. I expected I would spend more time with him, meaning being more physically present as an advisor and as a support for him. That obviously has not happened. It's been a little bit more challenging.
So if somebody was an outsider and they say, well, COVID is hitting the United States hitting other places. The kind of companies that aren't going to do well or companies that say are in the theme park business, the live entertainment business, the cruise ship business, the hotel business. And those are all the businesses that you're in yet your stock has really rallied and done reasonably well. Why do you think you haven't been as hard hit financially as you might think on from the outside.
I think the reason our stock has been resilient and the company has been resilient is we were on extremely solid footing as a company going into this. Meaning our businesses were all doing well and their prospects for the future were actually quite bright. And so I think the street has looked at us knowing that we've been affected in dramatic fashion by COVID, but also realizing that when it ends, we will have the ability to rebound in a significant way. In addition to that, we had pivoted in a very significant way in the direct to consumer digital entertainment direction, meaning we launched Disney plus ESPN plus and in the acquisition of 21st century Fox for a controlling share of Hulu.
我认为我们的股票和公司都很有韧性的原因在于,我们作为一家公司进入时已经站稳了脚跟。这意味着我们的业务都很好,并且未来的前景实际上相当光明。我认为市场看着我们,知道我们受到了COVID的巨大冲击,但也意识到,当疫情结束时,我们将有能力以显著的方式反弹。此外,我们在直接面向消费者的数字娱乐方向上有了很大的转变,我们推出了Disney plus ESPN plus,并通过收购21世纪福克斯获得了控制Hulu的股份。
So we moved into a space that is not only very exciting in many respects, the future of entertainment, but one that invests the investment community is looking at very positively.
我们搬进了一个在许多方面都很令人兴奋的空间,它是娱乐业未来的方向,投资社区也对它非常乐观地看待。
So how did a nice Jewish boy from New York wind up running Disney? Let's go through that. You grew up in the New York areas. That right? Yes, it is cut by the way, it's a pinch, a pinch yourself moment. And I grew up in a relatively modest background lower middle class. My dad was a well educated man, the advertising business, but he suffered from terrible manic depression and it made it very difficult for him to hold a job. My mother became an employee at a junior high school library, later on in my childhood to help support our family, but it was modest background, but I love, I never felt poor and I never felt deprived of anything, including love, by the way, my family.
Your parents didn't say you need to be a lawyer or a doctor or something like that. They didn't say that to you. There was a little bit of a push for me to be a doctor because my mother's oldest brother was, but no, my father and my mom were pretty good at letting me pursue my whatever my dreams were. And my dreams early on were to become a Walter Cronkite or a television news anchor person. I actually became a weatherman when I left Ithaca college for a local TV station there.
And that was sort of the start, get a job on camera and then hopefully work up, work your way up from there all the way to, you know, possibly becoming a network anchor man. Well, that didn't happen. I lost confidence in myself and my ability to actually fulfill that dream. And so I pivoted and took a job behind the scenes in production at ABC in the middle of 1974.
So if you ever thought you could have been Al Roker, if you were really good at being a weatherman. That's true. Yeah. So, you know, I tease every once in a while. I'll go into one of our TV stations or visit a good morning American. I warn them that, you know, my next job may be theirs. And I may, you know, I may become the weather person on good morning America.
如果你曾经认为自己有可能成为 Al Roker,如果你真的擅长当气象员的话。那是真的。是的。所以,你知道的,我有时会开玩笑。我会去我们的电视台之一或者拜访《早安美国》。我会警告他们,你知道的,我的下一份工作可能就是他们的工作。我可能会成为《早安美国》的气象员。
So initially you were doing some production at ABC and so forth, but eventually went into the sports area. So did you think your career was going to be basically one day running ABC sports and that would be the highest that you would have rise to? What have been fine with me? Actually, there are a number of steps along the way that if I had achieved them, I would have been absolutely fine with that being kind of the last job..
Yes, I would have loved to have been president of ABC sports. Interestingly enough, I never got that opportunity. The people who had purchased ABC from capital city's communication, Tom Murphy and Dan Burke actually took me out of that role and sent me out to LA. I was the entertainment division of ABC or primetime programming, which is a huge step for me into an area of the business that I had very little familiarity with. But they believed in me and gave me that shot.
So when you you're doing very well out there, then ABC says you're doing so well, we want you to come back to New York and kind of help run the whole company. Did you want to go back to New York at that point?
I did. I was ready. I had done my four and a half years stint at ABC entertainment. But I was ready to go back to New York and they offered me the job to be president of ABC, the ABC network.
Now you're the big shot and you are going to be you're running the whole company and not all of a sudden, cap cities people say, guess what? We're going to sell the company to Disney. So was that something you were happy with there? Did you think there was a role for you then?
Well, it was an incredible time. It was the summer of 1995 and I had been told by Tom Murphy who was in chairman that it was likely I'd become the next CEO. Which I thought was great Warren Buffett, by the way, was our largest shareholder. And I thought he had some enough faith in me. But Michael Eisner approached us and made an offer that not only we felt we couldn't refuse, but we thought was in the best interest to the shareholders of the company turns out we were right and look in the back of my mind. Even though Michael made it very, very clear that they were never going to be a guarantee. I thought if I played my cards right, if I performed well, I could potentially run the Walt Disney company at some point.
So eventually, Michael Eisner decides to retire a little earlier than maybe he had thought he was going to retire. The board says we have to go look for somebody to run the company. Did they just call you up the next day and say it's your job? Or did you have to kind of go through a little beauty contest?
Yeah, a little beauty contest would be an understatement. Now, we, as I mentioned at the beginning of this discussion, we had gone through a tough period of time. And the board felt that and rightfully so looking back that they had to be expansive in their thinking about who the next CEO should be. And they created a true contest. They considered a number of outside candidates, they interviewed outside candidates. And they said to me that I was the only inside candidate, but they made pretty clear at the beginning that not only was not a guarantee, but it was less likely that I would get it because I had been COO for five years. And they, they seemed intent on bringing change to the company because they felt it was needed. And so as the insider, I actually had the outside track, not the inside track. Eventually they call you up and say the job is yours.
And subsequently, as I mentioned the outset, your stock is up about 400 plus percent and market caps about 400 plus percent. Then anybody ever call you up and say, hey, we made the right decision. We're sorry we made you go through that process. Does anybody do that?
No one said that we're sorry we've made you go through the process. They, they, on the number of occasions board members were very generous in their compliments of me and, and to me about the job that I was doing. I think, you know, looking back, I think they thought they made, they made the right decision. And look, I think that the numbers speak for themselves and the position of the company today is, you know, far different than it was back then. And, you know, a lot of that was due to strategy that was laid out even in that succession process because they discussed some of the things I wanted to accomplish and being able to execute that strategy over the years.
In your book, you point to four acquisitions you made. Let me try to go through each of them with you. One of the first ones was Pixar. You, Disney had a complicated relationship with Pixar. How did you convince Steve Jobs to sell you Pixar and was that an easy decision to convince the board to buy Pixar? It was thought to be a pretty high price.
Yeah, we paid over $7 billion for Pixar and it was an idea that I had right, right away. In fact, I laid that idea on the table to the board and my first meeting at CEO of the company, which I'm not sure it's the right way to start.
But we had gone through a period of time where Disney animation had been faltering. And almost a decade. And we had a very good. We had had a lot of success with Pixar and what was basically a joint venture with them.
That was ending and Steve Jobs, you know, in a very, very difficult and kind of in your face manner told us publicly, meaning he made an announcement publicly that the Pixar relationship with Disney would end.
I felt that I had to address Disney animation that it needed, it needed huge improvement. And I thought the fastest way to accomplish that all be at the riskiest and the most expensive was to buy Pixar.
Not only to bring Pixar in as part of the company, but bring the executives in that would create it all the success of Pixar and have them turn Disney animation around. And that was my pitch to the board.
And it took on the board side, it took from October to January to convince them it was the right thing. And a lot of. I used up all the capital I had and they didn't have much because I was a brand new CEO.
But I also was able to convince Steve Jobs that it was a good idea when the notion of buying Pixar came to me.
但是,当我想到收购皮克斯的想法时,我也能说服史蒂夫·乔布斯认为这是一个好主意。
And I called him up. I was actually quite nervous. I got him on the phone and I said, I've got a crazy idea. Can I come up and talk to you about it?
我打电话给他时,其实有点紧张。我接通了电话,然后说:“我有一个疯狂的想法,可以来跟你谈谈吗?”
I didn't think I should broke the subject on the phone. Well, I don't know how well you knew Steve, but anyone who knew Steve would know that if you said to Steve, I have a crazy idea, he would have to hear it right away.
So the notion that I would say that to him and then say, but I'll come up and talk to you was ridiculous. And he made me tell him on the phone, like in a minute. What was my crazy idea? He said, well, it's not that crazy. Why don't we, why don't you come up and we'll talk about it.
And that led to a very, very interesting discussion with him on the subject us buying Pixar and Steve becoming the largest shareholder of the Walt Disney company, a member of our board and a true friend of mine that was just a simple result of that process.
Before the Disney board is about to approve the acquisition, he tells you something about his health that he has his cancer had returned. So did you ever think about changing the procedure, proceeding to go forward with the deal or not?
Yeah, actually we were on the Pixar campus, basically preparing for the announcement, which Steve and I were going to make.
嗯,实际上我们当时在皮克斯公司的园区,主要是为了准备宣布一件事情,这件事情由我和史蒂夫来宣布。
And he said, can we go for a walk? And he told me that he was going to tell me something that only his wife and his doctors knew. And that was that the cancer that he had had a few years earlier.
That he was operated on had come back in a different form. And he wanted me to know it because he wanted me to he wanted to give me a chance to back out of the deal.
他曾经接受手术的事情以不同的形式回来了。他想让我知道这件事,因为他希望我有机会退出交易。
At that point, I looked at my watch and it was incredible. It was 30 minutes before we were announcing a seven plus billion dollar deal that everybody that needed to approve it had approved.
It's not like I had an opportunity to phone anybody and ask for their advice because he demanded confidentiality.
我并没有机会给任何人打电话并询问他们的建议,因为他要求保密。
I mean, I made a decision kind of on the spot, which is that we were buying Pixar that while Steve was important in the acquisition because he would become a board member and a shareholder.
He was not material to the Pixar deal itself. And therefore, I thought that I was exercising the right set of responsibilities as the CEO of the company and and and asking shareholders ultimately to approve a large acquisition.
And so, while we went to make the announcement with me carrying that incredibly heavy news inside me and it was a secret actually that held for a few years that the world didn't know.
所以,当我们去宣布消息时,我背负着那个极为沉重的秘密,实际上这个秘密持续了几年之久,世界并不知道。
And that was in early 2006 and he lived until October of 2011. So I had the benefit of not only his friendship and his advice and his position on the board, but you know of the of the wisdom that Steve job brought to any room, any situation wisdom and incredible talent and instinct.
And so, I personally has a lot of characters, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, so forth. Why did you need to go by the characters from Marvel Entertainment? That's was your next big acquisition, another comic book series of characters. Why did you feel that was such an important deal?
And in 2005 when I became CEO, we were starting to see a very, very disrespected, huge amount of disruption to our business. And one of the things that mostly thanks to technology and one of the things that new technology was bringing was an explosion of what was being produced of creativity and consumer choice in the entertainment field.
And I thought that with so much more consumer choice, that high quality branded entertainment would be even more valuable. So after the Pixar acquisition was successful, we created a list of acquisition targets at Disney. And they all were consistent with what I just laid out. We were looking for high quality branded entertainment and Marvel and Star Wars were at the top of the list.
So you then went to talk to George Lucas and said, by the way, I'd like to buy your company and we will make Star Wars in the future. And you can watch the movie, but we're going to make it. Was that hard for him to give up the creative control of Star Wars? It was, but again, you know, we saw in Star Wars something that was extraordinary like Marvel and like Pixar and like Disney, as I talked earlier, and the difference being that George was the creator of it and the sole shareholder of it.
And it was really who he was. And I think he explained to me at some point that, you know, when he passes this, it will say Star Wars creator George Lucas, this was, you know, like selling his birthright. It was an incredibly difficult thing for him. I had a lot of empathy for him, but it was hard. And I don't know whether he has has second thoughts about he's never he hasn't expressed that to me, but I would guess that it's worked out really well for him for his family. It certainly worked out well for us.
I can't speak for him, but I think he's happy with the stock price increase that he got from from the acquisition. But again, I can't speak for him.
我不知道他的想法,但是我觉得他应该很高兴,因为收购导致股价上涨。但是再说一遍,我不能替他回答。
Let me ask you about the last acquisition. You know, the ones he've made, they weren't what I would call bet your company kinds of acquisitions. They were expensive, but they weren't exactly 50 and 60 billion dollar acquisitions. So when Rupert Murdock said he might be interested in selling part of his company, did you worry about, you know, if it didn't work out, it could be the end of your job and the end of your career and things like that.
No, look, I've gone into every one of these acquisitions with a level of confidence that not only were they were the right acquisition, the right price that, but that we could execute the vision that we had when we laid out the reasoning behind the acquisition. Maybe it had too much confidence, I don't know, but so far so good.
So now as executive chairman, you have a little more free time than maybe when you had the CEO. And if you don't go into the Biden administration, what are you going to do to top what you've done and to keep yourself energized? I read you just went on to the board of a new food company. What do you want to do to top what you've already done?
I don't really have a need to top what I've done at all. I'm extremely satisfied with what I've accomplished. And I wouldn't, if I could do it again, I wouldn't change anything. I don't think. So I'm really, I'm not looking to do that at all. I'm looking for things that are stimulating, as I mentioned earlier, whether that's in the public or the private sector. I don't know.
If you considered the highest calling of mankind, which is private equity as another career, you know, I'm not ruling anything out. I know, I know private equity has served you extremely well. I've had some feelers from that space. I've not made any decisions about what I do next.
I think I'm very excited about the next chapter, you know. I'm sure it will be a sorry day for me to leave Disney because it's been my home for 46 years, almost 47 by the time I leave. On the other hand, there's a whole world out there and I still have a lot of energy and a lot of huge amount of curiosity. And I'm looking forward to it.
That was Bob Eiger, current executive chairman and former CEO at Walt Disney on the David Rubenstein show, Peer to Peer Conversations. And that's it for this hour of Bloomberg Best. I'm Ed Baxter. And I'm Denise Pellegrini. This is Bloomberg.