Deadline’s Doc Talk Podcast: John Ridley Goes Off On Nelson Peltz, Disney Board Suitor; Plus, The ‘Happiest’ Documentary At True/False

We are becoming part machine.

As award-winning directors Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss prepared to shoot their new documentary Girls State, they had no way of knowing real-world events would intrude upon the production in a major way. Nor, of course, did their protagonists.

The Walt Disney Co. has released the official vote totals from its April 3 annual shareholder meeting, the event that featured the culmination of a proxy fight waged by Nelson Peltz.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Trian Partners founder Nelson Peltz has accepted defeat — for now. Peltz, a day after the activist investor lost a costly proxy battle with Disney, went on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street,” Thursday to discuss what happened. “The shareholders have voted.

Activist investor Nelson Peltz, reflecting on his losing proxy battle with Disney, says he will “watch and wait” to see if the company keeps its promises.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor A day after Disney declared victory over activist investor Nelson Peltz, CEO Bob Iger said the board is proceeding with “urgency” in trying to identify the next chief executive with the “distraction” of the proxy fight over. “This was decisive in terms of how shareholders voted,” Iger said in an appearance Thursday morning on CNBC from Disney’s Burbank, Calif., headquarters, about the results of the April 3 meeting. Succession “is the board’s No.

A former ABC director of development is taking the network, parent company Disney and John Ridley to court for gender, racial and economic discrimination, claiming they firing her when she complained about the alleged situation.

Cynthia Littleton Business Editor In the end, Bob Iger didn’t have to break a sweat to fend off Nelson Peltz. No question, Disney did have to spend tens of millions of dollars to fight the proxy battle with the activist investor, which came to a head on Wednesday with the Mouse House’s annual shareholders meeting.

Scoring a big and costly win Wednesday against Nelson Peltz’s second attempt to get on the Disney board, Bob Iger was both gracious and a little biting in victory.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor It’s official: Disney shareholders shot down activist investor Nelson Peltz‘s effort to win seats on the Mouse House’s board of directors. Investors voted to reelect all 12 of the company-backed board members, including CEO Bob Iger, ending the most expensive corporate proxy fight in history.

Disney has succeeded in barring Nelson Peltz from its board of directors as shareholders at the company’s hotly anticipated annual meeting today voted for the company’s slate of 12 nominees. It was a months-long bitter and costly fight.

Sebastian Maniscalco slammed two fees he encountered while eating at a restaurant last week.The stand-up comedian took to social media saying a restaurant he dined at should get rid of the “COVID fee” he said it charged him. The fee was $3, according to Maniscalco.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Disney had won enough of the shareholder votes cast for its 12 board candidates as of Tuesday evening to successfully defeat an aggressive, months-long proxy fight waged by Nelson Peltz‘s Trian Partners hedge fund, Reuters reported, citing anonymous sources. Enough votes had been cast as of Tuesday evening to put Disney’s board directors “safely ahead” of Trian’s two nominees for the board — Peltz and ex-Disney CFO Jay Rasulo — per the Reuters report. In addition, the three board candidates proposed by investment firm Blackwells Capital failed to win enough votes, according to the report.

Elon Musk is backing Nelson Peltz in the proxy battle for the future of Disney.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Disney and CEO Bob Iger have pulled into the lead for their 12 board candidates to win reelection — with activist investor Nelson Peltz trailing — with more than half of shareholder votes cast ahead of the Mouse House’s April 3 annual meeting, according to the Wall Street Journal. Two of Disney’s institutional investors — BlackRock (which owns about 4.2% of outstanding shares) and T. Rowe Price (0.5%) — support the company’s own slate of directors, which include Iger, per the Journal, citing anonymous sources.

Disney may have nudged Nelson Peltz farther from its board as giant BlackRock is said to be backing the company’s slate of directors. The firm is Disney’s second-largest shareholder at about 4.2%.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Usually, shareholder votes for corporate board directors have all the suspense of a Soviet-style election. Most of the time, director candidates are backed by the company, and they run unopposed — winning election or reelection in a landslide. In 2022, only 75 board-endorsed candidates at companies in the Russell 3000, less than 0.5% of almost 17,500 board members on the ballot that year, failed to get elected by shareholders, per an analysis by the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance (which also noted that, while small, the number had dramatically risen vs.

William Earl CalPERS, the influential California pension fund, has voted to shake up the Disney board by backing the election of activist investors Nelson Peltz and Jay Rasulo who have waged a months-long battle with CEO Bob Iger and the incumbent board of directors. The California Public Employees Retirement System told Reuters that the fund had cast its vote for Trian Partners’ Peltz and Rasulo as alternative directors to join the Disney board,.

Around 100 hours before the deadline for all Disney shareholders to cast their ballots in the acrid board clash between the Mouse House and activist investor Nelson Peltz, one of the country’s top pension funds just rolled its cannons onto the battlefield.

EXCLUSIVE: The New York City Retirement Systems are in Disney‘s corner amid bitter proxy fight with activist investor Nelson Peltz.