Final Disney Proxy Vote Tally Shows Blowout Win for Bob Iger
The votes have been tallied, and Disneyâs victory over the activist investor Nelson Peltz and his Trian Partners is final.
But thanks to a new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, we now have a sense of just how big a margin it was. Disney on Wednesday filed the âfinal, certified voting resultsâ from the annual shareholder meeting, as tallied by its independent auditor First Coast Results, Inc.
Arguably the biggest winner was Disney CEO Bob Iger, who can now move forward with the âdistractingâ proxy fight behind him. Igerâs board seat was also up for a vote, and the filing shows that he secured about 94 percent of the votes, or 1,118,465,241 votes, with only 73,022,334 votes to withhold.
Peltz, meanwhile, was seeking to replace Maria Elena Lagomasino on the board, but only received 370,974,890 votes, compared to Lagomasinoâs 749,857,222, with the current director beating him by a two-to-one margin. That being said, Lagomasino had the most withhold votes of any current Disney director, with 441,873,001 shareholders withholding their vote for her.
Each of Disneyâs current directors, with the exception of Lagomasino, secured more than 1 billion votes.
Former Disney CFO Jay Rasulo, who was on Trianâs slate of nominees alongside Peltz, was seeking to unseat Disney director Michael Froman. Rasulo lost the seat by a wide margin: 1,041,407,854 votes to 141,546,437 votes.
Rasulo also had 1,049,145,182 withhold votes, the most of any director nominee; Peltz received 819,744,149 withhold votes.
Another activist, Blackwells Capital, proposed its own slate of directors, though they garnered little support, securing just over 24 million votes each, far below every other nominee.
The current Disney director with the fewest withhold votes was former Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman, who only saw 30 million votes to withhold.
The Disney shareholder meeting on Wednesday, April 3, was the culminating moment for the proxy fight, which officially kicked off in January, with a high-profile campaign from both Trian and Disney to secure votes from both institutional and retail shareholders.
Both sides had significant backers, with Disney securing public statements of support from the likes of George Lucas, Michael Eisner, Laurene Powell Jobs, and perhaps most notably the families of Walt and Roy Disney, who called the activists âwolves in sheepâs clothing.â
Trian, meanwhile, secured a recommendation from the influential advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services, as well as Californiaâs pension administrator CalPERS. However, that support was not enough for the activist to prevail.
