Activist investor Nelson Peltz said Thursday morning that he’s ending his proxy fight against Disney after CEO Bob Iger announced sweeping restructuring and cost-cutting plans yesterday alongside the company’s latest quarterly earnings.
Peltz’s Trian Fund Management, which holds less than a 5% stake in Disney worth roughly $1 billion, had launched a proxy fight last month and demanded that he receive a seat on the company’s board of directors.
Peltz made the comments on CNBC shortly after Iger was interviewed on the channel. It was a newsmaking conversation, with Iger suggesting that Hulu’s future as part of the company is far from set in stone.
Iger said Thursday that “everything is on the table” with streaming service Hulu. He said that he wasn’t going to speculate whether Disney is a buyer or seller of Hulu right now. Disney has been expected to buy the rest of it from Comcast as early as January 2024.
Disney released more details about its new structure Thursday, saying TV chief Dana Walden and film studio head Alan Bergman will share oversight of a new general entertainment division that includes the Disney+ and Hulu streaming businesses. The move does away with an earlier structure put in place by former CEO Bob Chapek that took distribution decisions away from those executives.
