UPDATED with new exec comments. Disney CEO Bob Iger has offered more precise timing for Disney’s previously announced plan to crack down on password sharing on streaming flagship Disney+, saying it will start rolling out in June.
21.03.2024 - 16:27 / deadline.com
(Updated with Laurene Powell Jobs statement) The fight for the future of the Walt Disney Company got very fast and furious this morning.
Just minutes after influential proxy advisory board Institutional Shareholder Services recommended adding activist investor Nelson Peltz to the Disney board, the chairman struck back with a blunt dismissal. Rolling out the really heavy artillery, that first response was soon followed by a strong shutdown of the Peltz uprising by the widow of Apple kingpin Steve Jobs.
“While we’re heartened to see support for Michael Froman and ISS’ recommendation to withhold on dissident directors Jay Rasulo and the Blackwells’ nominees, we strongly believe that ISS reached the wrong conclusion in its recent report when it comes to adding Nelson Peltz to the board,” Disney board boss Mark Parker said Thursday as an increasingly bitter April 3 vote by shareholders looms.
“In contrast to Glass Lewis, ISS fails to acknowledge the breadth of perspective and expertise Ms. Lagomasino adds to the Board,” Parker added. Glass Lewis is another influential proxy advisory firm that came out in last week in favor of all Disney nominees “The strong recent performance and results overseen by the Disney Board demonstrate our focus on long-term shareholder value creation and succession planning an our commitment to good governance practices”
As Disney’s succession plans once again became the core of the board dispute, one of the largest and most influential single shareholders in Disney added her voice to the proxy dust-up today, clearly in a move to shut ISS down. Laurene Powell Jobs, founder and president, Emerson Collective, said this morning:
My family and I have been significant investors in The Walt
UPDATED with new exec comments. Disney CEO Bob Iger has offered more precise timing for Disney’s previously announced plan to crack down on password sharing on streaming flagship Disney+, saying it will start rolling out in June.
It had all the elements of a good action movie – jeopardy, revenge, a mega budget – with even some casualties thrown in (albeit corporate).
Disney investors backed Iger and other company directors, defeating a campaign by activist investors including Nelson Peltz who argued that Disney had underperformed in the streaming-television era.“The proxy vote was a decisive, true endorsement of the board,” he said, playing down criticisms of the activist investors and saying that the company was focused on succession – one of the major tasks facing the board of Disney.Asked about criticism from billionaire Elon Musk, who had backed Peltz in the proxy battle, Iger said: “I ignore it.”
Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor A day after Disney declared victory over activist investor Nelson Peltz, CEO Bob Iger said the board is proceeding with “urgency” in trying to identify the next chief executive with the “distraction” of the proxy fight over. “This was decisive in terms of how shareholders voted,” Iger said in an appearance Thursday morning on CNBC from Disney’s Burbank, Calif., headquarters, about the results of the April 3 meeting. Succession “is the board’s No.
Cynthia Littleton Business Editor In the end, Bob Iger didn’t have to break a sweat to fend off Nelson Peltz. No question, Disney did have to spend tens of millions of dollars to fight the proxy battle with the activist investor, which came to a head on Wednesday with the Mouse House’s annual shareholders meeting.
After Disney declared victory in its proxy battle with activist investor Nelson Peltz, CEO Bob Iger went on a theme-park offensive during the company’s annual shareholder meeting.
Scoring a big and costly win Wednesday against Nelson Peltz’s second attempt to get on the Disney board, Bob Iger was both gracious and a little biting in victory.
Walt Disney Co. CEO Bob Iger touted as a “win-win” the recent settlement of litigation with the Ron DeSantis-appointed special district board that oversees the company’s Florida theme park properties.
Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor It’s official: Disney shareholders shot down activist investor Nelson Peltz‘s effort to win seats on the Mouse House’s board of directors. Investors voted to reelect all 12 of the company-backed board members, including CEO Bob Iger, ending the most expensive corporate proxy fight in history.
The minutes are ticking down to the close of Disney’s bitter proxy fight with Nelson Peltz, whose attempt to scale the board is a direct challenge to CEO Bob Iger.
Proxy advisor Egan-Jones on Wednesday became the second independent firm to support activist Nelson Peltz‘s effort to secure seats on the Disney board.
Nelson Peltz said today that his bitter proxy fight with Disney is “not about Mr. Iger, nor is it a referendum about his leadership” even as CNBC reported that his firm, Trian Partners, has withheld votes from the CEO, who is also a board nominee.
Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor UPDATED: Nelson Peltz claims Disney‘s board, not CEO Bob Iger, is the problem. But his investment firm, Trian Group, withheld its votes for Iger’s reelection to the Disney board. With just over a week before Disney’s annual shareholder meeting on April 3, Peltz’s Trian — which has been aggressively campaigning to get two seats on the Mouse House’s board — issued a new statement Monday saying the battle is not about any dispute with Iger but rather about forcing change on the board’s composition to boost the company’s financial returns.
Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Disney was handed a setback in its boardroom fight with activist investor Nelson Peltz after proxy-advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services recommended that shareholders vote him onto the Mouse House’s board. ISS, whose recommendations are influential among institutional investors, cited Disney’s “failed” succession planning in the CEO role in its report backing Peltz, whose Trian Partners.
ISS, the most influential proxy advisory service, has recommended shareholders vote to put Trian’s Nelson Peltz on Disney’s board, saying the activist investor, “with his considerable experience on other boards and fiduciary duties owed to a large shareholding group, appears best positioned to bring a shareholder perspective to the board.”
Zack Sharf Digital News Director Sydney Sweeney said in a recent interview with GQ UK that starring in Sony’s “Madame Web” was a “strategic business decision” that more or less paid off despite the film being one of the year’s most infamous box office flops. In Sweeney’s eyes, “Madame Web” got her in the door at Sony Pictures and that’s where she was able to have a massive box office success with the romantic comedy “Anyone but You.” “To me, that film was a building block, it’s what allowed me to build a relationship with Sony,” Sweeney told the publication. “Without doing ‘Madame Web’ I wouldn’t have a relationship with the decision-makers over there.
George Lucas is the latest to come out in support of Disney and CEO Bob Igert as the company wages a bitter proxy fight against activist investor Nelson Peltz, who is making a run for two seats on the company’s board.
Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Star Wars mastermind George Lucas has come out with a statement in support of Disney‘s board and CEO Bob Iger, urging Mouse House shareholders to reject a bid by two activist investor groups to take seats on the media company’s board. “Creating magic is not for amateurs,” Lucas said in a statement released Tuesday. “When I sold Lucasfilm just over a decade ago, I was delighted to become a Disney shareholder because of my longtime admiration for its iconic brand and Bob Iger’s leadership.” Lucas continued, “When Bob recently returned to the company during a difficult time, I was relieved.
Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Disney‘s current strategic direction under CEO Bob Iger got the thumbs-up from independent proxy voting and corporate governance advisory firm Glass Lewis, amid a campaign launched by two activist investor groups to win seats on the Mouse House’s board. Glass Lewis, in a March 18 report, recommended Disney shareholders vote for the Disney-selected 12 director nominees — and reject those put forward by Nelson Peltz‘s Trian Partners and another firm, Blackwells Capital — at the company’s annual meeting on April 3.
Proxy advisory firm Glass Lewis has recommended that Disney shareholders withhold votes for all board candidates except the company’s own.