Dive Brief:
- Walt Disney Co. CFO Christine McCarthy detailed plans to restructure the company’s entire finance team in a memo sent to employees, according to a Business Insider report.
- “This new Finance structure is designed to provide our creative and distribution teams with strong financial and strategic support, creating clear lines of responsibility,” McCarthy wrote in the memo according to Business Insider, adding that while the changes are necessary, “I acknowledge that change can be filled with tough decisions, conversations, and realities. There is more work to be done.”
- The Burbank, California-based media giant is also set to eliminate thousands of jobs this week, including about 15% of the staff in its entertainment division, Bloomberg reported.
Dive Insight:
The reported changes in financial leadership come as expected layoffs this week span TV, film, theme parks and corporate teams, affecting every region where Disney operates.
Disney is one of many major media companies trimming headcount. Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal, Warner Bros.’ Discovery Inc. and Paramount Global have slashed their workforce in recent months. Meanwhile, fellow media giant Netflix made workforce cuts in the latter half of 2022 as well, in the wake of its first subscriber loss in a decade.
Back in February, the Mouse House announced layoffs of 7,000 workers as part of CEO Bob Iger’s restructuring plan to cut costs and “return power to creative executives,” CFO Dive previously reported.
In the memo, McCarthy wrote that the changes to the financial team structure are aimed at organizing teams to "service the new company structure and deliver on our cost-saving efforts," according to Business Insider which stated the publication had reviewed the leaked communication.
Disney did not respond to a request to comment on the information in the memo.
The changes that the CFO referred to include naming Bryan Castellani as the new chief financial officer of Disney Entertainment and ESPN.
Previously, Castellani was the executive vice president of finance for Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution, a unit that is now being disbanded under Iger’s restructuring that returns “authority to our creative leaders and making them accountable for how their content performs financially,” explained Iger on an earnings call in February.
McCarthy was also in the media spotlight last year. Disney CEO Bob Iger left his post as Disney’s top executive back in 2020, and then returned in November of 2022 after McCarthy expressed a lack of confidence in his replacement, Bob Chapek, The Wall Street Journal previously reported.
