It might sound like a storyline from the very un-Disney-friendly show Succession, but Disney head Bob Iger insists that Marvel Entertainment chairman Ike Perlmutter's firing was related to company efficiency — not his support of activist investor Nelson Peltz's attempt to force his way onto the Disney board.
Iger made the comments to Time magazine while being interviewed for the presser's annual Time 100 issue. And while not completely forthcoming about all aspects of the firing — saying “I'd rather not get into details about this one” — Iger did stress this was “a necessary step in the direction of us creating a more efficient company.” He further added that “there was redundancy specific to the way Marvel was being managed.”
When Time tried to clarify whether the firing of Ike Perlmutter had anything to do with his involvement in championing activist shareholder Nelson Peltz's attempt to acquire a Disney board seat, Iger said simply that “this decision would have been made regardless of that.”
Perlmutter had been with the company since Disney bought Marvel Entertainment in 2009 for $4 billion. He had a strained relationship with Kevin Feige that reached a boiling point in 2015 during the filming of Captain America: Civil War over budgetary concerns.
Perlmutter released a statement after his firing, elaborating that “I have long expected that my working relationship with Disney would end. That it should come as a result of my trying to help Disney improve its business should sadden many shareholders as it does me, the company’s largest individual shareholder.”
With that many shares of the highly profitable Disney still in his pocket, sounds like Bob Iger and the rest of us need not worry too much about how Perlmutter will manage financially after his termination.
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