Before his death, Steve Jobs told Bob Iger to retire from Disney and try to enjoy the good things in life: report

Bob Iger said in an interview with Time magazine last year that his return to Disney was inspired by Steve Jobs’ return to Apple in 1997.

Before dying of pancreatic cancer in October 2011, the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs told his counterpart at Disney, Bob Iger to start planning his retirement.

Jobs told Iger not to stay too long at Disney so that he would still have time to enjoy the good things in life, The New York Times reported in a wide-ranging story on Disney’s troubled leadership succession.

The story, which was published Sunday, delved into the circumstances behind Iger’s decision to step down as CEO in February 2020 and his eventual return in November 2022.

Representatives for Iger at Disney didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours.

In his 2019 memoir “The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company,” Iger said that he became good friends with Jobs after the latter sold his animation studio Pixar to Disney.

Besides joining the company’s board of directors in 2006, Jobs was also at one point, the largest individual shareholder in Disney. Jobs, Iger wrote in his memoir, played a critical role in Disney’s acquisition of Marvel in 2009.

“I asked him if he’d be willing to reach out to Ike Perlmutter, Marvel’s CEO and controlling shareholder, and vouch for me,” Iger said of Jobs’ involvement in the Marvel deal.

“Later, after we’d closed the deal, Ike told me that he’d still had his doubts and the call from Steve made a big difference,” Iger recounted. “‘He said you were true to your word,’ Ike said. I was grateful that Steve was willing to do it as a friend, really, more than as the most influential member of our board.”

However, Iger will likely not be taking Jobs’ advice on retirement anytime soon.

In July 2023, Disney said that Iger’s tenure as Disney CEO will run through 2026. Iger’s contract was originally set to expire at the end of 2024 before it was extended for an additional two years.

Notably, Iger said that his return to Disney was inspired by Jobs’ own homecoming at Apple.

Jobs was fired from Apple in 1985 but made an unexpected return as CEO after Apple had acquired his computer company, NeXT.

“The person that I think most of, that I was fortunate enough to have observed very closely, is Steve Jobs,” Iger said of Jobs in an interview with Time magazine published in April 2023.

Jobs, Iger told the magazine, had returned to Apple under “very different circumstances” than when he’d founded it. Iger said he’d “taken a lot” from Jobs’ experience.

“One is when you are brought back, and you agree to come back, you have to do so with unbelievable enthusiasm, and not an ounce of hesitation,” Iger said.

“And then you have to know very quickly what it is you’re expected to accomplish and what it is you can accomplish. And then go at it with incredible resolve, incredible zeal, and incredible energy.”