With $30-million-a-day losses Disney brings back Bob Iger to stem the bleeding, but is it too late?
There had been some speculation that Bob Iger stepped down from the post of Disney CEO in anticipation of the losses the company would face because of the coronavirus pandemic. But now, Iger has come out with a statement refuting these claims and now it seems he's actually coming out of retirement to help the company he led for 15 years deal with this unprecedented crisis.
Iger first spoke about stepping down back in December when the coronavirus pandemic was just beginning to spread in Wuhan, China. Now with theaters, theme parks and cruises shut down around the world, Disney is practically hemorrhaging money.
In an email to the New York Times, Iger wrote "No surprises… nothing hidden… nothing different or odd to speculate about… A crisis of this magnitude, and its impact on Disney, would necessarily result in my actively helping Bob [Chapek] and the company contend with it, particularly since I ran the company for 15 years!"
The NYT reports that the company may be losing $30 million or more by the day as the situation continues to worsen. And with such losses hitting the company, it's causing massive damages to all the people employed by Disney as well.
Disney employed as many as 223,000 people as of summer 2019 and while the actual number of people laid off and furloughed hasn't been revealed, the numbers are estimated to be massive. According to Chris Duarte, the president of Workers United Local 50, the company has furloughed more than 30,000 workers in the California resort business alone.
On Sunday, the company confirmed that another 43,000 workers in Florida will also be furloughed. While all these workers will keep their benefits for the time being, their last paychecks will arrive on April 19 and what might happen after is anybody's guess.
With things looking bleaker than ever for the House of Mouse, Iger has reportedly decided to remotely maintain control over the company to help guide it through this crisis. "Mr. Iger is now intensely focused on remaking a company that will emerge, he believes, deeply changed by the crisis," Ben Smith of The Times writes in the aforementioned report. "The sketch he has drawn for associates offers a glimpse at the post-pandemic future: It’s a Disney with fewer employees, leading the new and uncertain business of how to gather people safely for entertainment."
How Disney might emerge from this situation is something we'll just have to wait and see but for now, the company is fighting for its life and looking to Iger to save it. Whether he can manage it or not, only time will tell.
