In officially closing the books on his and investor Nelson Peltz’s failed attempt to secure two seats on the struggling entertainment conglomerate’s board of directors, former Marvel Entertainment CEO Ike Perlmutter has reportedly sold off the entirety of his Walt Disney Company stock holdings.
Per the Wall Street Journal, Perlmutter slowly relieved himself of his 25.6 million shares of the House of Mouse from April to mid-July 2024, ultimately trading in the stocks for a total payout of near $3 billion.
This follows the similar ‘full exit sale’ of his proxy fight partner, the aforementioned Peltz, who washed his hands of his invest firm Trian Fund Mangement LP’s full Disney holdings in May, taking home roughly $1 billion in profit on the entire affair after all was said and done (the exact amount of shares held by the firm has not been publicly disclosed to the public).
As previously reported, said Disney proxy battle kicked off in early 2023 when Peltz’s own investment firm Trian Fund Management LP leaned on their then-single-digit millions of shares in the company to nominate him to their board of directors in the hopes that his outside influence could help turn around the company’s flailing financial and reputational forecasts.
But after Disney CEO Bob Iger both acknowledged the company’s recent failures and promising to right the ships, the next month saw Trian drop their board campaign.
“We congratulate Disney and Bob Iger on their recently announced operating initiatives, which are a win for all shareholders and broadly align with our thinking,” wrote the firm. “We are pleased with the role that Trian was able to play in helping to focus the Board to take decisive actions which we believe will lead to better financial results. We were also pleased to see the Company’s pledge to restore the dividend.”
However, when these promises failed to bear any fruit in the following months, Peltz would once again make a move for a seat on Disney’s board in order to hold them to task, this time demanding not just one, but two seats at the table, the additional one for former Disney CFO Jay Rasulo.
“Disney has lost money for its shareholders over a long period of time,” argued Peltz via a statement issued through Trian. “A year ago, faced with a proxy contest that sought to bring accountability for these failures, Disney attempted to assure shareholders that a ‘significant transformation’ was underway. In early 2023, Disney outlined a plan to ‘succeed at succession,’ reignite the Company’s creative engine, and achieve profitability in the streaming business. A year later, however, Disney shareholders are no better off. It turns out, Disney’s story was just a fairy tale.”
“To improve the focus, alignment and accountability of the Board, Disney needs new independent directors,” he further rallied. “Help us elect Nelson Peltz and Jay Rasulo, who pledge to ask hard questions, work with the rest of the Board and management to develop thoughtful strategies, align the interests of executives with shareholders and hold the leadership team accountable for performance.”
At the time that Peltz kicked off his first proxy battle, Perlmutter, who had started at Marvel Comics as a member of the board of directors in 1995 before being promoted to vice chairman in 2001 and subsequently CEO of the then-reogranized Marvel Entertainment in 2005, was still employed with Disney as one of the overseers of Marvel Studios developments (though his role in their endeavors had been significantly reduced in 2015 in order to give Kevin Feige more control over the MCU’s direction).
Then, right when Peltz’s first salvo was coming to an end, Perlmutter was pink-slipped by Disney.
At the time, the company claimed his cutting from their team was due to his role having become redundant. However, Perlmutter himself would later claim that he got the axe because he wanted to cut back costs even further than Iger had previously promised.
“I have no doubt that my termination was based on fundamental differences in business between my thinking and Disney leadership, because I care about return on investment,” the exec told The Wall Street Journal in April 2023. “All they talk about is box office, box office. I care about the bottom line. I don’t care how big the box office is. Only people in Hollywood talk about box office.”
To this end, he then posited, “It was merely a convenient excuse to get rid of a longtime executive who dared to challenge the company’s way of doing business.”
“My experience with any major corporation, when they’re having problems and they don’t have the free cash or whatever it is, usually people like Nelson Peltz know how to put it back on track,” added Perlmutter. “I learned one thing about creative people my whole life: You cannot give them an open credit card.…They’re doing this for 30 years, why would they change?”
Things came to a head in April 2024 when Peltz and Rasulo’s potential appointments were turned over to shareholders for voting. Ultimately, this election resulted in both men receiving support from just 31% of Disney’s investors, thus resulting in both of them being denied board membership.
“With the distracting proxy contest now behind us, we’re eager to focus 100 percent of our attention on our most important priorities: growth and value creation for our shareholders and creative excellence for our consumers,” beamed Iger in a statement following his victory.
