Susan Arnold

Like Bob JPEG said when, you know, Iger stepped down that he had foreknowledge of COVID and all these things, which I think is very interesting.

reasonable to assume like i don't think i needed like to know internal people in the government told you so uh if you're like oh is he gonna like answer some of these allegations that bob chipik out there i don't think that he is because if you look at the snippet about this book i can tell you exactly what this book is going to be about so it says robert eiger was less than a year into his retirement when he got an urgent phone call from the chair of the disney board i I'm sure Susan Arnold called Bob out of the blue when he had no communications with her the entire time as chairman of the board.

Would he be willing to return to his job as CEO? Finances were shaky.

Leadership was flagging.

Yeah.

who would have been the head of the board at the time Susan Arnold who was like who had like HR on the phone and he was like uh oh this is not good but like they went to that retreat at Alani and they asked Iger to step out of the room and then they all like congratulated Bob Chapak on what a fabulous job he did because he was better for the bottom line but then he said like I think the other thing that like the, the like read between the lines thing.

And I said this last, I started reading this last Saturday when we were all together in Disney world.

And I said, Bob Chapek doesn't have that like X factor personality thing.

But one significant element that I noticed as I moved through this section was this, where Chapek's gaze was in terms of what and who he was focused on.

The named people he includes in his stories are either those he imagines holding a position of power above him, such as Bob Iger or the Disney board chair, Susan Arnold, or those he sees as possible rivals, such as Tom Staggs or Jay Rasulo.

There's little mention of team members or peers who worked with Chapek on various projects.

So this presents Chapek as a person who was deeply interested in advancing, rather than as a person who was deeply interested in building teams or communities inside the Disney company.

The problem, and this is what I think Bob Iger and the Disney board should have known, is that moving a person like this, whose understanding of art is in units, was going to be very problematic for the company, because with a person like this at the top, there would be no way to point to other areas of the company where sincerity and deep artistry existed unless they aligned with consumer trends, information from focus groups, and other plans to quickly increase profits.

Chapek was told in December 2019 that he would be the next CEO.

The following month, he met with the chair of the Disney board, Susan Arnold.

He officially became CEO on February 25th, 2020.

Meanwhile...

The Disney board being Susan Arnold, the chair of the board who had more influence than Bob Chapik did.

We pointed this out at the time that when the board chair who's independent has more power or influence than the current CEO.

And then you had executive chair Bob Iger sitting around before that who had more power than the CEO.

Sat down for like two hours.

And so he says the, the circumstance how this happened was Susan Arnold was head of the board, and that Iger came to him and said, "You're the next CEO," and it's something like, and Chapek apparently was like, "Oh, do I need to go meet with board members and such?" 'Cause he's like, "I thought the timeline was gonna be like Bob's eventually stepping away." And then Bob Iger and Susan Arnold both said, "Oh, that's not necessary.

This is gonna be a matter of days, not weeks." So it was like very sudden.

And then they do the CNBC interview-

Well, let me say this.

The board, and Susan Arnold right at the top there, and several of the board members are very close friends with Bob Iger.

Oh, of course.

That's how

And so.

Three o'clock comes and she's like, I had never had any intention of taking a walk with you.

I wanted to make sure you're available because Susan Arnold wants to talk to you about taking the job back.

Bob Iger you met.

And this time I was pointed because I felt that he completely undermined me.

And as I told Susan Arnold, our chairman of the board at the time, I felt like it was a death of a thousand cuts.

And it was just one after another.

Let me ask you, there's a story in the book that's also been reported on, but reported on somewhat differently.