Bob Iger, CEO of The Walt Disney Company, speaks in the course of the grand opening ceremony of Shanghai Disney Resort’s Zootopia-themed attraction at Shanghai Disney Resort on December 19, 2023 in Shanghai, China.
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Disney’s largest shareholder, index fund manager Vanguard, plans to support management over Nelson Peltz’s Trian Partners in Wednesday’s board vote, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday, citing unnamed people aware of the matter.
Institutional shareholders have until Wednesday to alter their vote. Vanguard owns 7.8% of Disney shares. BlackRock, Disney’s second-largest shareholder with 4.2% of shares, can also be supporting the incumbent board and CEO Bob Iger, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
The reporting on how Disney’s largest shareholders are supposedly voting prompted harsh criticism from onetime activist investor Bill Ackman on Tuesday evening.
“Only the corporate and its advisors have access to how shareholders have voted before the day of the annual meeting,” Ackman wrote on social media platform X. “The rationale why the progress of an election for directors have to be kept confidential until the outcomes are final is that leaking the outcomes can affect the last word final result.”
Disney shareholders should support Peltz’s efforts, Ackman wrote, each because he can be “greatly additive” to Disney and since the media leaks, which Ackman alleged got here from Disney or its advisors, raised the query of why management was “fighting so hard to maintain him off.”
It could be a major blow to Peltz’s ambitions to hitch Disney’s board if each BlackRock and Vanguard move to back the media company’s candidates. That will leave only State Street and Geode Capital Management, the corporate’s third- and fourth-largest shareholders respectively, as unknowns.
Through an arrangement with former Marvel Chairman Ike Perlmutter, Trian controls 1.8% of Disney shares, making it the fifth largest shareholder. Retail investors have until 11:59 p.m. ET Tuesday to submit their vote by phone or online.
Trian has won support from other, smaller shareholders, including Neuberger Berman and CalPERS. For its part, Disney has called in a few of the most outstanding names in the company and media world, including JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Star Wars creator George Lucas.
Disney’s shareholder meeting begins Wednesday at 1 p.m. ET.
Vanguard declined to comment to CNBC.
Read the complete Bloomberg report here.
