How Bob Iger Achieved a Net Worth of $690 Million

Currently, Bob Iger is one of the most famous individuals who can be found in the business world. This is because he is both the CEO and the Chairman of Disney, which has managed to become even bigger in the present time than ever before. Naturally, this is reflected in Iger’s current net worth that has been estimated by Forbes to be about $690 million.

How Did Bob Iger Reach His Current Net Worth?

In short, Iger was born in New York City. His father Arthur was an executive with the Greenvale Marketing Corporation who spent some time as a professor teaching marketing as well as public relations. Meanwhile, Iger’s mother worked at the Boardman Junior High School in the hamlet of Oceanside where he was raised. It is interesting to note that Iger’s family had something of a connection to the entertainment industries in that his paternal grandfather Joe was the brother of Jerry Iger, who started out as a news cartoonist but went on to become the co-founder of a comic book packager along with his business partner Will Eisner during the Golden Age of Comics.

Regardless, Iger was an excellent student who became involved with the media, as shown by how he graduated magna cum laude from Ithaca College with a degree in TV and radio. Furthermore, he picked up a fair amount of practical experience while studying there as well, seeing as how he was the host of an Ithaca College show called Campus Probe. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Iger’s initial career goal was to become a news anchor, though it wasn’t too long before that changed.

By the mid 1970s, Iger had become a part of ABC. By the late 1980s, Iger had managed to become the head of ABC. When Disney bought out Capital Cities/ABC in 1996, he was the President as well as the COO of the corporation, where he would remain until 1999 when he was named the President of Disney’s international operations. Eventually, Iger rose to the position of second-in-command to the head of Disney Michael Eisner in 2000, thus putting him in an excellent position to succeed said individual when Roy E. Disney embarked on his second “Save Disney” campaign in the 2000s.

For those who are unfamiliar, Disney was the last member of the Disney family to be involved with the Disney corporation in an active manner. Primarily, he is famous for ousting not one but two Disney top executives with his two “Save Disney” campaigns, with one being Ron Miller in 1984 and the other being Michael Eisner in 2005. Initially, Disney had worked together with Eisner to save Disney from a hostile takeover that would result in it being dismantled so that its assets could be sold for a profit. However, their relationships soured in time, though it wouldn’t reach a breaking point until 2003. Soon enough, Disney started up his campaign, which was followed by Disney investors showing a notable lack of confidence in Eisner continuing as the head of the corporation. With that said, the ousting of Eisner’s faction was by no means complete, as shown by how it was his lieutenant Iger who succeeded him in 2005. Moreover, this came with a reconcilation with Disney and his partners as well as with Pixar, which had been one of the main issues that concerned the former.

Since that time, Iger has overseen a huge expansion of the Disney corporation, which is a remarkable turn of events for something that was once at serious risk of being hacked up into marketable pieces by outside investors. For example, he was the one who oversaw the purchase of Marvel Entertainment in 2009 in exchange for $4 billion, which has proven to be very profitable because that happened when the Marvel Cinematic Universe was still in its earliest stage. Likewise, Iger was the one who oversaw the purchase of Lucasfilm in 2012 in exchange for another $4 billion, thus enabling Disney to get its hands on both the Star Wars franchise and the Indiana Jones franchise. More recently, Disney picked up a wide range of 21st Century Fox assets as well, which was reported by a wide range of publications. Besides these examples, Disney has seen other forms of expansion under Iger’s leadership, as shown by his 2016 statement that Disney had created 18,000 new jobs over the course of the last decade.

Of course, Iger isn’t a perfect businessman who can never do wrong. For instance, the initially very fast-paced release schedule for Star Wars movies has been slowed down somewhat in recognition of the fact that the market for Star Wars movies isn’t quite the same as the market for Marvel movies. Furthermore, Iger and the rest of Disney are famous for not being particularly good at handling video games, which is why they made the sensible choice of entrusting that kind of thing to a more experienced partner but may or may not have made a mistake when it comes to their choice of partner. Still, there can be no doubt about the fact that Iger is one of the most successful businesspeople in the entire world, which in turn, means that he has earned considerable sums for his leadership of Disney.

Further Considerations

Now, Iger has reached the point that he needs to think about who will succeed him as well as how that succession will be handled. This is because he has announced that he will be stepping down from his current positions as both the CEO and the Chairman of Disney when his current contract comes to a conclusion in 2021. Something that should prove to be fascinating to watch for those with a fondness for media corporation affairs. With that said, it will also be interesting to see how Iger’s current net worth continues to change once that happens, particularly since it will depend so much on what other things he might choose to get involved in afterwards.