Activist investor Nelson Peltz lost his high-profile proxy fight against the Disney board on Wednesday after shareholders voted by a “significant majority” to reject Peltz’s proposal to provide him and former Disney CFO Jay Rasulo board seats.
Instead, all 12 Disney board members were re-elected to their seats, a Disney spokesman said in an announcement.
For months, Peltz and his company, Trian Fund Management, waged a serious campaign against the Disney board, arguing that the board was not doing its job adequately and that CEO Bob Iger did not have nearly enough influence over the sport. Peltz’s important criticisms of the Disney board were that the corporate botched succession planning for Iger and did not develop a profitable streaming strategy. The campaign featured Rasulo as a strategic expert in the corporate’s Juggernaut theme park division, but did not resonate with investors.
The voting results gave Peltz a transparent defeat. Even before the meeting began Reuters had broken one Story Peltz had already lost. Early tallies showed that Peltz lost his vote to fill the board seat of longtime High Net Worth Investment CEO Maria Elena Lagomasino by three to 1, while Rasulo lost his vote against former Mastercard President Michael Froman by yet another lost by a bigger margin of 5 to 1 Hollywood Reporter.
During the course of Peltz’s battle against the Disney board, each side waged a media and promoting onslaught to prove their case to shareholders. Disney said it spent nearly $40 million on an promoting campaign. Meanwhile, Peltz spent about $25 million on his media offensive, releasing a 133-page deck called “Restore the Magic” outlining his plan, which included, amongst other things: “Netflix-like” streaming margins from 15% to twenty%.
During the campaign, Iger gained several notable supporters, including the CEO of JPMorgan Chase Jamie DimonMajor Disney shareholder and Star Wars creator George Lucas (probably through a connection to his wife Mellody Hobson, who sits on the board of JPMorgan) and the support of lots of Walt Disny’s heirsincluding Abigail Disney who was openly critical from him up to now. Peltz received the support of one other known Iger hater – Elon Musk. The world’s richest man promised to purchase more Disney shares if Peltz won his board seat.
With the fight behind him, Iger said he was looking forward to getting back to business as usual. “With the confusing proxy competition now behind us, we are committed to focusing 100% of our attention on our most important priorities: growth and value creation for our shareholders and creative excellence for our consumers,” he said in an announcement.
Peltz’s camp said in an announcement reported by the Wall Street Journal: “We are proud of the impact we have made by refocusing this company on value creation and good corporate governance.”
Disney shares fell 3% the day after the vote.
