By Variety | Created at 2024-11-14 02:17:17 | Updated at 2024-11-21 13:02:37
1 week ago
Hedge fund billionaire Nelson Peltz, the activist investor who launched an unsuccessful proxy fight to shake up Disney’s board, said he’s responsible for connecting Elon Musk and Donald Trump.
Peltz, founding partner and CEO of investment firm Trian Partners, made the claim during the CNBC Delivering Alpha conference Wednesday.
“Elon is a friend of mine,” Peltz said. He said Musk, together with Peltz’s son Diesel, earlier this spring “had a breakfast at the house, we invited Donald for breakfast, and they sort of reunited again… I hope it’s good, you know. I was a matchmaker.”
Peltz added, “look, I don’t know if Donald would have had this sweeping victory without Elon’s help.”
On Tuesday, Trump tapped Musk — a major Trump donor who used X to actively promote his campaign — along with conservative entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a “Department of Government Efficiency” advisory group to recommend ways to “dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies.” The acronym DOGE is a reference to the Dogecoin cryptocurrency; Musk is a well-documented fan of the Doge meme and he has promoted Dogecoin (originally started as a joke to mock other cryptocurrencies) to his followers.
“The world is suffering slow strangulation by overregulation,” Musk posted on X on Wednesday. “Every year, the noose tightens a little more. We finally have a mandate to delete the mountain of choking regulations that do not serve the greater good.”
At the CNBC conference, Peltz, about Trump’s presidential victory, said, “I’ve never seen so much optimism, you know?… There’s no question, we know where America stands. Trump got the popular vote; he got the Senate; he kept the House. So the ball’s in his court.”
Peltz added, “I think the alternative was terrible,” referring to VP Kamala Harris. “The alternative was ridiculous. It was a woman who took no responsibility for the last four years, and I didn’t like the way we were going anyway.”
In November 2023, Peltz announced he was launching a proxy campaign to get seats on Disney’s board of directors. Disney had lobbied shareholders to reject Peltz and Trian’s other nominee, ex-Disney CFO Jay Rasulo, for the board. The company said Peltz “brings no media experience and has presented no strategic ideas for Disney” and called Trian’s proxy fight “disruptive and destructive,” fueled by Peltz’s “vanity” and a personal grudge against Disney CEO Bob Iger that was nursed by ex-Marvel Entertainment chief Ike Perlmutter (who had pooled his shares with Trian’s holdings in the proxy fight).
Peltz ultimately lost his bid to win seats on Disney’s board and shortly thereafter sold all his Disney shares, reportedly earning $1 billion.
“I was friends with all the guys I had proxy fights with except Iger,” Peltz said.
Asked by CNBC’s Sara Eisen why Peltz lost the proxy fight at Disney, he responded, “Because the index funds didn’t want me to win. Index funds get paid a lot of money from Disney, and they didn’t want me to win. But let’s see what happened. I bought the stock in the mid to low 80s, and when we lost the proxy fight, within 48 hours, I sold all the stock at 119. There wasn’t much of a celebration with the victory, because it went back down to the 80s, and now it’s getting close to 100 again because they’re looking for a new CEO.”
Peltz added, “Look, if the stock goes back to the 80s, I’ll be back, I promise you.” Disney shared closed up 1.7% Wednesday to $102.72/share.
In his proxy fight, one of Peltz’s biggest complaints was his allegation that Disney’s board failed to do its job with CEO succession planning in not vetting former parks boss Bob Chapek, who was Iger’s personal pick to take over the job in 2020. “They all took Bob’s word, and they voted Chapek in. That’s not what the responsibility of a director is,” Peltz said in an CNBC interview earlier this year. The board ousted Chapek in November 2022 and brought Iger back on as CEO.
Last month, Disney said its board expects to announce a CEO successor to Iger in early 2026. The Mouse House also announced James Gorman, former CEO of Morgan Stanley, will assume the chairman role in January 2025.
“I know Gorman, he’s a good man. He’s going to do a great job, and he will… get a respectable CEO in there,” Peltz said Wednesday.
He then commented about Disney’s two most recent CEOs, Iger and Michael Eisner: “I don’t know what happens in that office at Disney. I think if you’re there for a couple years, you think your name is Walt Disney, you change your initials… I don’t know what goes on there, but they all seem to think they’re Walt Disney. And I knew Bob a little bit before the fight. I never saw him draw Mickey Mouse. He wasn’t much of a cartoonist. So we’ll see what happens. … I think they’ll have a new CEO before the end of ’25, that’s my guess.”
Amid the proxy fight with Disney, Peltz questioned “woke” Marvel films featuring Black and women superheroes — including “Black Panther,” which grossed $1.35 billion at the worldwide box office — asking rhetorically, “Why do I have to have a Marvel [movie] that’s all women? Not that I have anything against women, but why do I have to do that?” he told the Financial Times. “Why can’t I have Marvels that are both? Why do I need an all-Black cast?”
Pictured above (l. to r.): Nelson Peltz, Elon Musk and Nicola Peltz Beckham (Nelson’s daughter) at the L.A. premiere of her film “Lola” on Feb. 3, 2024
