Disney CEO: Positive Sign That Presidential Transition 'Smooth' So Far
It's good that the presidential transition “is already off to what appears to be a fairly smooth start,” Disney CEO Bob Iger said on an earnings call. “It looks like there's cordiality, which we've not seen in a long time,…
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and there's an attempt by both sides, the incumbent and the president-elect, to approach this in a rational, cordial” and polite way, he said Thursday. “That can only be good for business and for the country." If Trump’s election means U.S. tax policy is “likely to be addressed sooner rather than later, that's obviously a good thing,” Iger said. Disney has been “exhorting” President Barack Obama and Congress for years “to take a look at the current tax policy of the United States, particularly the corporate tax rate, and to close more loopholes, but lower the corporate tax rate,” he said. In company news, there's “an inevitability” to the launch in the U.S. of a direct-to-consumer Disney-branded over-the-top service in the mold of the OTT service that debuted about a year ago in the U.K., the CEO said. "We want to learn as much as we possibly can, which is what that was designed to do before we bring it out in any other market.” Costs of launching an ESPN-branded OTT service for live sports with BAMTech in 2017 (see 1609220053) will be small, said Iger.