“Bob Chapek.” The name that brings images of someone with less vision at The Walt Disney Company Than Goofy. The failed CEO who received lower scores at his latest job performance review than Daffy Duck.
He’s a cautionary tale, a corporate failure, an under-qualified, weak leader who rode his incompetence into a nice exit package. Yes, the follicle-challenged former CEO who replaced legend Bog Iger is going home with a $20 million golden parachute for the disaster he left for Iger to clean up.
Wait, correction — make that a $24 million severance package for failing.
Chapek’s two-year tenure was, how do we say this, “less than impressive.” He was the mastermind of a PR nightmare in Florida, tanked Disney’s streaming service, and a woke disaster who demolished a once-proud company’s stock price. A share was trading at $170 in January 2022 and fell to $100.
Disney’s board voted to extend Chapek’s contract for three years in June of 2022, then fired him later in the year. Yeah, that makes sense.
The latest big move on the Disney board was this; they named Nike exec Mark Parker as their new board chair. And Iger is in the big office, again, having returned as CEO, which gives stockholders confidence that a bona fide adult executive is running the show again.
Chapek’s severance payments, subject to him successfully completing “all of the terms of his post-employment consulting agreement,” will include a cool $6.53 million cash in remaining base salary through the scheduled expiration date of his amended employment agreement and about $1 million equivalent to a pro-rated target bonus for fiscal 2023. That’s what the wording in the proxy filing says. Oh, he also gets $12.7 million in Disney stock.
Just think how rich he would be if he were successful.
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