Earlier this year, Nelson Peltz took steps toward a proxy war with the Walt Disney Company, which resulted in Peltz stepping back after CEO Bob Iger announced massive changes to the company and many layoffs last February. Since then, Disney has seen a rapid decline in stock price, and now Peltz is seemingly coming back to take control.
Peltz’s firm, Trian Fund Management, recently bought up more stock as the prices have fallen, owning about 30 million shares at around $2.5 billion. This makes Trian one of the largest Disney shareholders, and they are seemingly pushing to leverage that for board seats. It’s also about 3X what they had the first time they announced their intentions for a Disney Board Seat back in January.
During the initial Proxy battle, Peltz only wanted one board seat, and now he wants more seats that the firm will try to obtain, as nominations for seats will open in December and run for about a month.
Disney will likely reject those nominations, but Trian can push for the seats again during the Walt Disney Company’s Annual Shareholder Meeting next year.
The Walt Disney Company made thousands of cuts to staff. Still, they have seen substantial stock drops as issues with theme park attendance, box office failure, declining Disney+ returns, a cable company carriage dispute, and billions of dollars heading to Comcast for Hulu.
Even when CEO Bob Iger announces things that would typically boost the stock, like investing in theme park expansion, the stock price contracts further. Announcements that once would have dropped stock prices, like selling off some of their linear networks, instead cause stock prices to rise.
Disney can’t seem to win right now, and Peltz sees this as an opportunity to move in and try to correct the situation.
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Source: MSN
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