The BoD complained Peltz does not have media experience. Guess what. Almost everyone else on the Disney board lacks media experience too.
Peltz’s point is, with the amount of loot that Disney makes off the parks, and merchandise, it is a consumer company, not exclusively a media company.
After protecting ESPN and buying Fox…Iger’s opinion is kind of amateurish as well.
Just because you get to play with tens of billions of dollars does not mean you are WEB.
I suspect what the board is trying not to say is that they don’t need an activist investor on the board pushing for short term profits at the expense of the long run.
They just fired a CEO who was overly focused on the short term numbers and drug the last CEO out of retirement to fix things up.
Disney is celebrating 100 years as a company this year. Very few companies reach that milestone. This board doesn’t want to be the one to start a downward spiral that drives Disney into the hands of someone else.
—Peter
Or, they don’t want someone who might criticize the CEO on the Board. Jessie Upchurch had been on the Tandy board for years. In the 90s, he started criticizing Chairman/CEO John Roach for the company’s consistent poor performance, over a number of years. Upchurch was advised he would not be nominated for reelection to the Board.
That’s a very different situation from the one happening at Disney.
Tandy kicked out an insider for their [arguably valid, especially in hindsight] criticism. Disney is trying to keep an outsider from getting in. Arguably, that outsider’s criticism isn’t in the long term interests of Disney.
–Peter
Dealbook snippet…the column only had this one relevant paragraph
Unilever taps a board member as its new C.E.O. The British consumer giant hired Hein Schumacher, who is also the head of a Dutch dairy cooperative, as its chief executive. The hiring of Schumacher, who began his career at Unilever, had the support of Nelson Peltz’s Trian, which had sought to shake up the conglomerate.