Iger earns $51 million in 2008

CNBC.com has a report by the Associated Press stating that Disney CEO Bog Iger made $51 million in 2008. Most of that $51 million was in stock options that have little value right now because of when he received the stock (Disney stock's current value is less than the value when Iger received it). Iger's actual salary was about $2 million and he did receive a performance bonus of nearly $14 million.

Iger has done a good job getting the company back on track after Eisner started to get a little out of hand. I can only hope Iger will continue the emphasis on improving and expanding the theme parks and continuing to produce quality animated movies.

However, I don't know about the reported effort to build Shanghai Disneyland. Is the market that rich over there to make a third park in Asia worth it? Do you realize that once Shanghai Disneyland is completed, Asia will have more Disneyland/Magic Kingdom parks than any other continent in the world (total of 3 - North America only has 2)? Now, if you count all Disney parks, the numbers stand thus:

• North America: 8 (DL, DCA, MK, Epcot, DHS, DAK, 2 water parks)
• Asia: 4 (HKDL, TDL, TDS, SDL)
• Europe: 2 (DLP, Studios)
• Africa: 0
• Australia: 0
• South America: 0

I can only hope Iger will stay the course and stick to Walt's original vision - productions and parks.