Disney Names James Gorman Chairman, Sets ‘Early 2026’ for C.E.O. Change

In a board shake-up, James Gorman, a director in charge of planning for a successor to the chief executive, Robert A. Iger, will become chairman on Jan. 2, 2025.

Disney said on Monday that it would name a new chief executive in “early 2026,” which is later than many in Hollywood had expected.

The timeline — the first Disney has described publicly — came as part of a board shake-up. James P. Gorman, a veteran Wall Street banker who joined the board in February, will become Disney’s chairman on Jan. 2, 2025, the company said. He will replace Mark G. Parker, who will step down after two years in the role and leave the Disney board entirely.

“A critical priority before us is to appoint a new C.E.O., which we now expect to announce in early 2026,” Mr. Gorman said in a statement. “This timing reflects the progress the succession planning committee and the board are making and will allow ample time for a successful transition.”

In August, Disney’s board put Mr. Gorman in charge of finding a successor to Robert A. Iger, 73, who came out of retirement in late 2022 to retake Disney’s reins. The board rehired Mr. Iger after it fired Bob Chapek, Mr. Iger’s handpicked successor.

Mr. Iger has publicly said he is “definitely” leaving when his contract expires on Dec. 31, 2026, a vow some people inside and outside of Disney have viewed with skepticism. During his earlier, 15-year stint as Disney’s chief executive, Mr. Iger delayed his retirement four times and seemed reluctant to leave when he did.

The Disney board and Mr. Iger are widely viewed as having botched the selection of Mr. Chapek, who had been running the Disney theme parks. The board never interviewed Mr. Chapek, and Mr. Iger soon turned on him, leading to a power struggle just as Disney was contending with the pandemic and the entertainment industry’s shift to streaming. Disney has been hit with multiple shareholder lawsuits related to Mr. Chapek’s tenure.

This time, four division leaders at Disney are vying to succeed Mr. Iger. They are Dana Walden, Disney’s top television executive; Josh D’Amaro, who runs theme parks and video games; Alan Bergman, Disney’s movie chief; and Jimmy Pitaro, whose fief is ESPN.

The question of whether any of those executives will ascend to the top job has captivated Hollywood since Disney announced in January 2023 that it had formed a succession planning committee. In recent weeks, chatter in the gossipy entertainment industry has escalated, with people speculating one day that Ms. Walden had already won the race, and the next day that Mr. D’Amaro was instead the choice, perhaps with Ms. Walden as chief creative officer.

The 2026 timeline given by Mr. Gorman may be designed to cool the rumor mill and refocus Disney employees on their work. The Disney board reiterated on Monday that external candidates are also being “reviewed.”

Mr. Gorman ran Morgan Stanley, the investment bank, from 2010 until last year. He remains the bank’s executive chairman, a role that ends in December. He was recruited to serve on the Disney board as part of Mr. Iger’s response to attacks from activist investors — one of whom, Nelson Peltz, harshly criticized the company for slipshod succession planning.

Mr. Gorman has won praise across corporate America for how he managed the succession process at Morgan Stanley. It was an unusually public three-way race that Mr. Gorman once jokingly compared to the cutthroat television series “Succession.”

Mr. Parker, Disney’s current chairman, indicated in a statement that he needed to focus attention on the troubles at Nike, which he ran from 2006 to 2020 and where he remains executive chairman. He was recruited to the Disney board in 2016, when Mr. Iger served as both chairman and chief executive. The board asked Mr. Parker to consider serving as interim chief executive in 2022, when Mr. Chapek was struggling with internal discord over a restructuring and the consequences of a political battle with Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. Mr. Parker declined, citing his Nike workload.

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