Bob Iger's method at Disney was to buy the talent rather than try to out-create it. Over his time running the company that approach turned a respected legacy studio into the dominant force in global entertainment.

Pixar. Marvel. Lucasfilm. Then most of 21st Century Fox. Each deal brought in franchises worth more than some studios, and taken together they redrew the map of the industry — while leaving the acquired creative teams enough independence to keep producing what made them valuable.

His genius was acquisition as strategy: buy the storytellers, then give them room to tell stories.

Streaming came next, because audiences had stopped waiting. Disney+ was the answer, launched into a market Netflix had defined, and it had to be built while theme parks and a declining television business still needed managing.

He handed over the job and then came back to it, which told everyone how much of the company had been running on him personally. What his tenure is taught as is a masterclass in renewing an old brand by acquisition and franchise-building rather than reinvention.

Iger grew up on Long Island and studied television and radio at Ithaca College. He joined ABC in 1974 as a studio supervisor and rose through ABC Sports and the network's entertainment division. Disney acquired ABC's parent, Capital Cities/ABC, in 1996; Iger became Disney's president in 2000 and chief executive in 2005, succeeding Michael Eisner.

The acquisitions came in sequence: Pixar in 2006 for about 7.4 billion dollars, Marvel in 2009 for about 4 billion, Lucasfilm in 2012 for about 4 billion, and most of 21st Century Fox in 2019 for about 71 billion. He also oversaw the opening of Shanghai Disneyland in 2016, a project that took nearly two decades of negotiation.

Iger retired as chief executive in February 2020, handing over to Bob Chapek, and returned in November 2022 after the board removed Chapek. His second spell focused on cutting costs, seeing off a proxy fight from the activist investor Nelson Peltz in 2024, and planning a succession that the board committed to settling by early 2026.