Michael Eisner Backs Disney CEO Iger Amid Board Fight With Activist Investors: ‘The Company Is Now in Excellent Hands’

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Disney released the official vote counts from its 2024 meeting of shareholders held April 3 — in which investors decisively defeated a campaign by activist investor Nelson Peltz to win a seat on its board. According to the votes disclosed in an SEC filing Tuesday, nine of the Disney-backed director candidates received more than 90% of the shares voted in their favor.

One day after Bob Iger faced questions about Disney‘s competitive position vs. Universal in the Orlando theme park game, there came more information today about a significant expansion of Walt Disney World.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Trian Partners founder Nelson Peltz has accepted defeat — for now. Peltz, a day after the activist investor lost a costly proxy battle with Disney, went on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street,” Thursday to discuss what happened. “The shareholders have voted.

Activist investor Nelson Peltz, reflecting on his losing proxy battle with Disney, says he will “watch and wait” to see if the company keeps its promises.

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.

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.

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.

Disney has succeeded in barring Nelson Peltz from its board of directors as shareholders at the company’s hotly anticipated annual meeting today voted for the company’s slate of 12 nominees. It was a months-long bitter and costly fight.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Disney had won enough of the shareholder votes cast for its 12 board candidates as of Tuesday evening to successfully defeat an aggressive, months-long proxy fight waged by Nelson Peltz‘s Trian Partners hedge fund, Reuters reported, citing anonymous sources. Enough votes had been cast as of Tuesday evening to put Disney’s board directors “safely ahead” of Trian’s two nominees for the board — Peltz and ex-Disney CFO Jay Rasulo — per the Reuters report. In addition, the three board candidates proposed by investment firm Blackwells Capital failed to win enough votes, according to the report.

Elon Musk is backing Nelson Peltz in the proxy battle for the future of Disney.

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.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Disney and CEO Bob Iger have pulled into the lead for their 12 board candidates to win reelection — with activist investor Nelson Peltz trailing — with more than half of shareholder votes cast ahead of the Mouse House’s April 3 annual meeting, according to the Wall Street Journal. Two of Disney’s institutional investors — BlackRock (which owns about 4.2% of outstanding shares) and T. Rowe Price (0.5%) — support the company’s own slate of directors, which include Iger, per the Journal, citing anonymous sources.

All due respect to Godzilla, but the first quarter of this year was a bust for Hollywood. There’s no getting around it. The news read like an April Fool’s joke without a punchline.

Around 100 hours before the deadline for all Disney shareholders to cast their ballots in the acrid board clash between the Mouse House and activist investor Nelson Peltz, one of the country’s top pension funds just rolled its cannons onto the battlefield.

EXCLUSIVE: The New York City Retirement Systems are in Disney‘s corner amid bitter proxy fight with activist investor Nelson Peltz.

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.