Activist investor Nelson Peltz lost his high-profile proxy battle against Disney’s board on Wednesday after shareholders voted by a “substantial margin” to reject Peltz’s proposal to grant him and former Disney chief financial officer Jay Rasulo a seat on the board.
Instead, the entire Disney slate of all 12 board members were re-elected to their seats, a Disney spokesperson said in an announcement.
For months, Peltz and his firm Trian Fund Management had waged a major campaign against Disney’s board of directors, arguing that the board was not adequately carrying out its duty and that CEO Bob Iger did not have enough leverage in the game. Peltz’s main criticisms of Disney’s board were that the company had bungled Iger’s succession planning and failed to put together a profitable streaming strategy. The campaign pitched Rasulo as a strategic expert in the company’s giant theme park division, which failed to gain traction with investors.
The results of the vote handed Peltz a resounding defeat. Before the meeting even started Reuters he had told a story that Peltz had already missed. Early calculations showed that Peltz lost his vote to fill longtime CEO Maria Elena Lagomasino’s board seat by three to one, while Rasulo lost his vote to former Mastercard President Michael Froman by an even wider margin of five to one, according to the report. Hollywood reporter.
Throughout Peltz’s fight against Disney’s board of directors, both sides engaged in a media and advertising blitz to make their case to shareholders. Disney said it spent nearly $40 million on an advertising campaign. Meanwhile, Peltz spent about $25 million on his media offensive and released a 133-page deck called “Restore the Magic,” in which he outlined his plan that called for, among other things, streaming margins “similar to Netflix ” from 15% to 20%.
During the campaign, Iger secured several big name backers including JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, major Disney shareholder and Star Wars creator George Lucas (likely through a connection to his wife Mellody Hobson who sits on the board of administration of JPMorgan) and the support of many Walt Disny heirs, including Abigail Disney, who has been openly critical of him in the past. Peltz has gained support from another well-known Iger hater: Elon Musk. The world’s richest man promised to buy more Disney shares if Peltz won his seat on the board of directors.
With the fight behind him, Iger said he was looking forward to getting back to business as usual. “With distracted proxy competition now behind us, we are eager to focus 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 a statement .
Peltz’s camp said this in a statement reported by Wall Street Journal: “We are proud of the impact we have had in refocusing this company on value creation and good governance.”
The day after the vote, Disney shares fell 3%.