Over the last few months or so, there has been some chatter about the potential for a hostile takeover at Disney! As these things often go, its complicated.
It involves a billionaire named Nelson Peltz who owns a large stake in Disney. He was not happy with Disney's "direction" under Bob Chapek's leadership. He was pleased that the company planned to make a change, but was troubled by them returning to Bob Iger.
He immediately sought to increase his stake in the company, and then looked to get himself onto the board of directors. When that failed, he allied himself with others who are disgruntled, and see Disney underperforming, including Ike Perlman (who at one point ran Marvel, before being ousted by Iger).
Peltz and Perlman have both publicly said that Disney has spent too much effort on woke-ness, and not paid enough attention to the bottom line.
They fought for seats again in November, which led Disney to protect against that, by filling them with other people - and then changed how seats are filled.
And that leads us to here: the pair intended to have a proxy fight early next year to oust Iger.
To counter that, Disney has announced the return of dividends (yay, in general, but as small stockholders we'll see very little), and plans to spend in order to grow in the major operational areas.
Its all crazy, but it shows just how far we've come with the company that Walt and Roy started. Its about politics and money - and not strictly about entertainment.
(Quick addition: its not that Walt wasn't political, he surely was, but it was handled differently, perhaps smarter? and those were different times). |