CEO Of The Year Nominees: 1) Robert Iger of Disney (DIS)

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Apr 27, 6:41PM EDT · Published Dec 1, 10:13AM EST

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Iphone 24/7 Wall St. will name its annual CEO of the Year next week. The executive will be picked from a field of ten which we will profile this week.

The CEOs are chosen on the basis of their company’s stock market and financial performances compared with their own industry groups and all large companies traded on US markets. Only firms with market caps of more than $5 billion were considered. 24/7 reviewed revenue growth, operating margins, balance sheets, return on assets, and return on equity.

Large media content companies have had a brutal year primarily as the recession has cut spending for advertising. Shares in CBS (CBS) are down more than 78%. Rupert Murdoch, considered by many to be the most clever media firm operator in the world, has watched shares in his News Corp (NWS) drop nearly 65%.

The only big media stock to outperform the DJIA is Disney (DIS). To a very large extent that is because CEO Robert Iger has managed to efficiently operate and balance Disney’s theme park, television network, cable content, movie studio, and consumer products divisions. Revenue and segment operating income at all of Disney’s four major divisions were flat to higher for the last fiscal year.

The firm’s peers should be so lucky. Disney’s balance sheet has remarkably little leverage when put up against the balance of the industry. Disney has been careful to continue to develop properties like ESPN and its animation studios which should serve it well as the recession spreads. A decision to cut costs in expensive divisions like the movie studio operation has paid off at the bottom line this year. His alliance with Apple’s (AAPL) Steve Jobs in both animation and digital content delivery is a huge asset.

Douglas A. McIntyre

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.