Christine M. McCarthy served eight years as Disney’s chief financial officer, helping to stabilize the company during the pandemic that shut down most of Disney, and last year’s chief executive officer Bob Chapek. A person who played a key role in the dismissal of the company resigns. She went down on July 1, she said Thursday.
McCarthy, 67, said he plans to take “family medical leave.” Disney didn’t provide further details, but it’s well known in the company’s upper echelons that her husband is seriously ill. McCarthy battled cancer twice during her Disney career, but her contract runs until next June.
Until then, she will serve as a strategic advisor and help “find and recruit long-term successors,” Disney said. Kevin Lansbury, 59, will become the company’s interim chief financial officer. He has been Chief Financial Officer of Walt Disney Parks, Experiences and Products since 2017. “He has the full confidence of me,” Disney CEO Robert A. Iger said in a statement.
Iger called McCarthy “one of America’s most respected financial executives” and said her influence on Disney “cannot be overstated.”
In February 2020, when the pandemic began to bring much of the global economy to a halt, Iger stepped down as Disney’s CEO, handing the job over to Chapek, the company’s former theme park chairman. Together, Mr. Chapek and Mr. McCarthy scrambled to get Disney into the strongest financial position possible, including securing $20 billion in the bond market.
“Christine was able to raise the right kind of indebtedness to keep us alive,” Kevin Mayer, Disney’s former head of streaming, told reporters. Smith College Alumni Magazine last year.
But by last fall, relations between McCarthy and Chapek had cooled. She became increasingly wary of losses in the company’s streaming division, and privately questioned whether Disney+ would meet the aggressive subscriber targets Mr. Chapek publicly touted.
The tension surfaced at Disney’s board of directors, where McCarthy frankly voiced his thoughts to the board, infuriating a startled Mr. Chapek. The board fired him at the end of November. (In May, Mr. Chapek and Mr. McCarthy both Shareholder litigation He accused the company of misleading investors about Disney+’s growth. )
Mr. Iger has agreed to come out of retirement to reclaim the reins of Disney. McCarthy, with whom he had a close relationship, was the first to call to see if he was interested.
McCarthy joined Disney in 2000 as a treasurer. She previously worked in the banking industry where she worked for 20 years.
