Disney defends its kingdom against activist shareholder
Things are continuing to heat up in the Peltz and Disney tussle since last week’s Tumelo Mole.
Billionaire shareholder Nelson Peltz is attempting to take his place on Disney’s Board of directors, but Disney is taking a stand.
Peltz wants to shake up the Board after finding fault in the company’s strategy, including the acquisition of 21st Century Fox and, to his mind, its poor CEO-succession planning.
On January 11th this year, Disney released a shareholder presentation in which it recommended all its investors vote against Peltz’s election.
According to Disney, Peltz “does not understand Disney’s business and lacks the skills and expertise to assist the board in delivering shareholder value”.
At its upcoming annual meeting, Disney shareholders will vote on whether to elect Peltz to the Board or not… and Disney is wishing upon a star that Peltz’s dream does not come true.
Legal blizzard: Activated
A multi-billion-dollar deal between tech giant Microsoft and Activision Blizzard — the video game company behind Call of Duty, Guitar Hero and World of Warcraft — has landed the companies in legal trouble.
Microsoft now finds itself facing the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) which is trying to prevent it from buying Activision for $69 billion.
If the deal goes through, it wouldn’t just be the biggest video-game-company acquisition of all time, but it would also be Microsoft’s biggest deal ever. However, in addition to FTC’s objection, the deal also faces opposition from The US Biden Administration.
According to the FTC, if Microsoft (the maker of Xbox) acquires Activision, it will be able to unfairly harm competition due to its new access and control of the top video-game franchises.
The director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition also said: “Microsoft has already shown that it can and will withhold content from its gaming rivals.”
Is all fair in love and war(craft)?
Netflix CEO drops his own ranking
Netflix’s founder Reed Hastings is set to join the likes of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates as he announced his intention to transition from co-CEO to Executive Chair.
Announcing the change in a blog post, the media-empire boss wrote that they had been discussing succession planning for “many years”, and that over the past two and a half years, he had been increasingly delegating Netflix’s management to his fellow co-CEO, Ted Sarandos, and his Chief Operating Officer, Greg Peters.
The dynamic duo will now become co-CEOs together and bring Netflix into a new post-founder era. But Hastings hasn’t left the building yet — in the role of Executive Chair he will still be involved in overseeing company management.
So yes, he’s still watching.
ShareAction’s ESG voting report
Responsible Investment charity ShareAction has published a report that shows the environmental, social and governance (ESG) voting habits of asset managers.
The UK non-profit’s findings show that compared to 2021, significantly more ESG-related proposals were voted against by the world’s largest asset managers in the 2022 annual meetings.
It was revealed that State Street, BlackRock and Vanguard only voted 29%, 24% and 10% respectively in favour of ESG shareholder proposals. Compared to large asset managers like BNP Paribas who voted in favour of nearly 100%.
In response to the report, Vanguard highlighted that although encouraging companies to improve on their ESG efforts might be deemed important by asset managers, they must also prioritise a company’s financial success.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink claimed that ESG proposals have become “overly prescriptive” and also attracted less investor support, while State Street refused to comment.
