Madeline Berg

Disney movies aren’t the magic that they used to be — and Bob Iger is well aware.“I’m mindful of the fact that our performance, from a quality perspective, wasn’t up to the standards we set for ourselves,” the CEO said during the House of Mouse’s fourth quarter earnings call on Wednesday.It’s nice to see Iger admit what many fans of Disney’s favorite properties — Marvel and Pixar, to name a few — already know.There’s been a string of box office misses. Films like “Elemental” and “The Little Merm…

When Adam Aron’s phone buzzed with a text from an unknown number in March 2022, he recognized the name of the sender: Mia.“Is my memory right that you were into ballet?” Aron replied.The woman on the other end played along: “Yes!” she replied.And so began the text exchange that would quickly turn from flirty to explicit — and within weeks morph into extortion of Aron, who is AMC’s CEO.The sender was not actually named Mia. It was Sakoya Blackwood, the mastermind of an elaborate blackmail scheme…

Tensions are running high at America’s elite colleges, as students, professors, and well-connected, wealthy alumni respond to Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel.The long — and very complicated — story short: Backlash is brewing against a sometimes radical campus culture that some people say is taking open dialogue too far and does not recognize the plight of Israeli citizens.Israel has long been a contentious issue on college campuses, causing protests and counter-protests covered by college news…

Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan is the latest business leader to slam an Ivy League institution for not taking a stronger stance against what he called antisemitism.The private-equity billionaire wrote an op-ed for the student newspaper of his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania. The guest column hasn’t yet been published, but was viewed in full by Insider. In it, he demanded that the school’s president, Elizabeth Magill, and the chairman of its board of trustees, Scott Bok, both…

Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman has called on Harvard University to release the names of students who are members of organizations that signed a letter saying Israel is “entirely responsible” for the violence unfolding in the region.The reason? So he and other CEOs don’t hire them.“I have been asked by a number of CEOs if Harvard would release a list of the members of each of the Harvard organizations that have issued the letter assigning sole responsibility for Hamas’ heinous acts to…

The pressure knob for Bob Iger just got turned a little higher.Like in any classic Disney movie, a would-be antagonist is back with a plan. In this case, that comes in the form of CEO Iger’s own personal antagonist, activist investor Nelson Peltz.Peltz, who runs hedge fund Trian Fund Management, has been upping his stake in Disney for months. He now has a holding of about 30 million shares, worth more than $2.5 billion, and is expected to ask for multiple board seats, The Wall Street Journal rep…

If you’re a CEO looking to keep your job, we’ve got some advice for you: Stop dating your employees. And if you do, don’t try to cover it up.Last week, Edward Tilly stepped down as the chief executive of derivatives and securities exchange Cboe Global Markets after a board investigation found he failed to disclose personal relationships with colleagues.He’s hardly the first top man in charge to get in trouble — and lose a job — over this sort of discovery.“You are seeing boards say there is no e…

Rupert Murdoch announced he is stepping down as chairman of Fox and News Corp. Thursday, leaving Lachlan Murdoch, his elder son, in charge. The move marks the finale to the media industry’s real-life version of “Succession.“The Murdoch family has an infamous knack for dramatics — so much so that many events that affected the family and its companies were plucked straight from reality and put onto the screen for HBO’s hit series.For decades, it was unclear which of Murdoch’s children would rise u…

September 15, 2023: This story has been updated to reflect Byron Allen’s offer to purchase ABC.Bob Iger continues to shake things up at the House of Mouse, and his next move could be selling the company’s flagship broadcast network ABC, all but spelling out the end of the broadcast era as we know it.Disney is in talks with Nexstar Media Group, the country’s largest TV station owner, to sell the ABC network and stations, Bloomberg reported, citing people with knowledge of the discussions.“While w…

There’s no arguing that Taylor Swift is polishing up when it comes to her Eras tour.The Wall Street Journal reported that the Eras Tour could be the world’s first $1 billion tour, but Pollstar estimated that it could rake in $1.4 billion. Broad estimates say Swift could take home as much as $500 million — though that would include the $55 million Swift has been dishing out in bonuses to truckers, dancers, sound techs, and more.The Eras Tour is shaping up to be immensely profitable for Swift, but…