We have been discussing the Disney’s recent acknowledgment that its political and social agenda has hurt profits at the company. In recent filings, the company agreed that there has been a “misalignment with public and consumer tastes and preferences,” including “consumers’ perceptions of our position on matters of public interest, including our efforts to achieve certain of our environmental and social goals.” There are also major disagreements over strategic financial decisions made by the company. Some shareholders appear eager for a change — and a challenge to CEO Bob Iger.
Trian Fund Management has announced that it will nominate Nelson Peltz, its founder, and Jay Rasulo, a former Disney chief financial officer, for Disney’s board. They are critics of Iger’s management and the direction of the company.
This is the second such campaign to challenge the authority of Iger and the direction of Disney by the shareholders.
What makes this challenge different is that former Marvel Entertainment chief Isaac “Ike” Perlmutter has thrown his significant holdings behind his friend Peltz.
In addition to a series of movie flops criticized for their underlying social narratives, the company is struggling with losses in its streaming business. The streaming business has lost a staggering $10 billion in the last four years. While profits for the company are up slightly, it is underperforming overall in comparison to prior years.
The challengers allege that Iger has a hand-picked board with little independence from the CEO. Peltz declared “As Disney’s largest active shareholder, we can no longer sit idly by as the incumbent directors and their hand-picked replacements stand in the way of necessary change, and peers and competitors continue to outperform. Shareholder-led board refreshment with focused and aligned directors who are accountable to the owners of the company is long overdue.”
The move at Disney could spur other shareholders to demand more accountability from corporate boards.
Disney has something in common with the Democratic Party. Disney is losing it’s ass over woke movies and the Democratic Party is losing it’s ass over illegal immigration. It seems that both are now changing their tune. However, we should be careful. If the present leaders of either organization should regain power they will revert to who they really are. The border will be even more open than it is now and Disney will add another one hundred DEI cops to their workforce. Be vigilant.
Wish I could easy I was surprised, but the question remains: will it matter? The left has funding that may make this irrelevant, guess we’ll see; I personally think leftism has got fail on a much broader scale.
The left does NOT have infinite funding.
This is significant.
This is likely encouraged by the AHB boycott and other successful boycotts or market flops because the left got too far over their skis.
Wealth is something that is created. The “funding” of the left is because people who have been successful in business have chosen to give money to left wing causes.
But you are not successful in business and have little to give if people do not buy your product.
Fundimentally the details of why Disney has failed to profit recently are relevant only in the context of CEO;s etc correcting the problem and making a profit.
You and I can conclude that Disney failed because the woke agenda does not sell. But if we are wrong in that – these same shareholders would be demanding MORE not less woke garbage.
This is absolutely about money – and far more money that is donated to left wing politics.
Spending on the 2020 Election was about $3B dollars. That is less than americans pay for potato chips in a year. That is a bit more than 1 B2 bomber. That is about 1% of Disney’s market cap. Disney has alone has lost more money than is spent in elections in the past century.
Thousands of times more money is traded on the NY stock exchange each day than is spent on a national election.
And I would note that the NYSE tracks billions of transactions a day with absolute perfection in real time down to the millisecond.
And our government can not count the vote for several weeks ?
Time for the Iger Sanction?
While many Americans oppose so-called “Woke” policies. The very Conservative U.S. Supreme Court ruled that LGBT-Americans had equal marriage rights and equal adoption rights as heterosexual straight Americans.
A ruling by a very Conservative U.S. Supreme Court, derived from decades of legal court rulings (precedent) is not “woke” or liberal. It follows conservative constitutional due process. The case was won by Conservative attorney Ted Olson.
Disney following the Conservative high court is not woke policies. What other so-called “woke” policies are people referring to? The Supreme Court ruled LGBT-Americans have equal rights as any other American, they are not 2nd Class citizens that have to remain silent anymore.
PREPOSTEROUS ARGUMENTS
Marriage and homosexuality are diametrically opposed oxymoronic contradictions in terms.
Marriage of a man and a woman was established for procreation and the security and perpetuation of parents, children and the family unit.
Homosexuals are de facto perversions and freaks of nature.
Homosexuals have no claim or relationship to child bearing or marriage; they simply desire the normalization of the abnormal, to appear to be as legitimate as normal people.
Matrimony is derived from the word mater, Latin for mother.
__________________________________________________________________
THE ORIGIN OF MARRIAGE & SHOULD WOMEN STILL CHANGE THEIR SURNAME? (ANECDOTAL)
Marriage wasn’t based on love. Its purpose was for a man to ‘own’ a woman and to guarantee that children were the husband’s biological heirs.
The father would give his daughter away saying ‘I pledge my daughter for the purpose of producing legitimate offspring’.
The ancient Hebrews were allowed to have several wives. Married Greeks and Romans were allowed to satisfy their sexual urges with prostitutes and teenage male lovers, whilst the wives had to stay at home and look after the household.
If wives were unable to get pregnant, the men were allowed to give the wife back and marry someone else.
– Rani Blog
You can have my marriage certificate when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Very similar Bible morality was used to prevent women from having equal rights to men. The Bible was cherry-picked to outlaw interracial marriage as well until the 1960’s.
Ted Olson, former George W. Bush official and devout Christian made quite a remarkable argument addressing religious cherry-picking. Olson in the U.S. Supreme Court pointed out that Jesus himself never said or supported many Bible verses written by other people – some written from hearsay takes centuries apart.
According to Olson and other Christian leaders, like Jimmy Carter – Jesus himself never denounced homosexuals, he instead embraced outcasts and unpopular people.
Founding father John Adams said:
“The government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”
Adams was referring to the fact America was founded to counter the theocratic governments in Europe – where Baptists were persecuted for not joining the Church of England.
So what? Religious texts are irrelevant.
The case did not address groomers in elementary schools. You have a right to be Trans and marry who you want but you better damn well leave them kids alone. The last time I checked it was still against the law to bare your breasts on the Whitehouse lawn.
Many others have written about the cesspool that has grown up around Disney but many of those lakes from which it comes were built and funded by Disney. I can see why Florida gave them self governing powers at first because of the massive amount of building and the investment Disney brought to Florida, which at the time was mainly a state south of Georgia and the main place was Miami, and spring holiday shenanigans. The leadership at Disney was totally different and the state should have put a time limit on the self governing power since all things change in time. But they didn’t and this is what happens. Pure almost undiluted power, beholding to none, whether feds or state or even customers. About the only thing that can make a real change is the shareholders and i wish them luck. The problem is the talent below the board will still be there and they are the ones that still make these money losing bombs. A Board change is just a start, there will need to be a purge of the “the talent” and more strict adherence to the vision of the entire corporation which is to serve their customers and not browbeat them. A tall order but it has happened before. Eisner Saved the company and then his leadership grew stale and he was replaced by Iger basically in a coup.
Hollywood, and this includes Disney, has become a victim of its own success and arrogance. George Lucas made his fortune by making movies that he wanted to see and he came from middle America. He did well. Not every movie was a success but I would not turn down having as good a winning percentage as him. That was a reasonable way to achieve wide viewership of films. When Hollywood assumed the role of telling us what was good and permissible and what was no longer permissable, they started to screw up.
An example is Dan Ackroyd who worked extremely hard on his Ghostbusters franchise and his interviews always stressed what he was doing because that was what his audience wanted to see.
When Ghostbusters 3 came out and bombed, his interviews were totally different and he basically lambasted the customers about their point of view and not being knowledgeable enough to like a good movie. A 180 degree turn if I ever saw one. It was disheartening to watch.
I know what I like and what I don’t like and I don’t need some progressive or even a conservative moron in Hollywood telling me what I should like. I like 1-a good story, redemption will bring me in every time 2-good acting 3-superior direction , Ridley Scott gets me in but so do may other excellent directors, especially Antoine Fuqua, Spielberg 4-some action, being a physician I really don’t care for family squabbles and self destruction that much (since I dealt with that on a daily basis) 5-unique locals, 6-historical movies (love to see them and then go out and read about the characters as recorded in history) That’s really fun.
There is so much out there what just begs to be filmed if only Hollywood would get a little more involved in the life of its audience both in the US and the World. There are formula’s that work. The trick is using them in new ways so the audience does not see the formula but the film itself.
Censorship and PC do not create the environment for good movies.
Disney several years ago was a great company but when the WOKE Liberals ESG crowd took key positions, along with the support of Disney Granddaughter who is woke, the company has gone to hell – turned a unique brand into a feel good woke company. Simply clean house go back to the years when Walt ran it.
In the “Citizens United” era, couldn’t the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division indict Governor DeSantis under Title 18 US Code 245 for a felony crime for violating Disney’s First Amendment rights? Title 18 is the federal criminal code.
Wasn’t DeSantis acting under “color of law” in retaliating against Disney’s perfectly legal exercise of free speech? In other words not an authority any governor has and not protected by sovereign immunity.
Let’s indict everyone who opposes the woke lunatics!
Governors do not have the authority to impose their political speech onto corporate-citizens (Disney) or human-citizens.
I oppose many WOKE policies (whatever that means) but governors can’t use government authority to retaliate against Disney’s legal First Amendment exercises.
Customers and the Board of Directors reward or penalize that legal First Amendment activity, not governors.
If the company’s agenda was displaying positive financial results, then the nay-sayers would just stop protesting.
The problem that most do not know is that this agenda is being forced upon these companies by the large international banks and other asset managers. They make it their mission to convince these boards of directors to be compliant in their agenda. This happened a year ago when Exxon Mobil had two new members forced into the board of directors by BlackRock and an eager activist shareholder that wanted the company to move away from dinosaur juice. These activists are mostly funded by pension and retirement programs that just want to be passive investors, but are giving the fuel to the asset managers that buy the stocks of these companies that are included in different market indices.
I’ll leave you with a quote from J P Morgan: “Give me control of the money supply, and I don’t give a (darn) who writes the laws.”
Turley chums for a partisan war over Disney.
Eb
It would appear, that despite the unrealistic desires of a small cadre of wokish social “fundamental transformers” the majoeity of sane people just won’t get on this train to cultural destruction. When stockholders realize the suicidal mission of these woke fanatics concerning their investments they will begin to shut down the cash – that is how it works. Somehow, an absurd societal aboration has been fomented by a few woke jihadis and created a thin but noisy army of the miseducated and have begun to damage the social order that is required to allow free enterprise to flourish.
“[C]onsumers’ perceptions of our position on matters of . . .”
So the problem with Disney is *not* the fact of its Woke policies or that it uses its art to propagandize children. The root of the problem is merely “consumers’ perceptions” of those facts.
You cannot fix a ship wreck until you acknowledge the fact that your incompetent navigation caused the ship to wreck.
That hole in the side, and the water gushing in, are all in your head. Think it’s not there and it won’t be.
Sort of like the current approach to “transgendering” kids – it you want to be a girl, your lack of mammary glands, vagina, clitoris, labia, the fact of your penis and testicles these are merely imaginative fallacies – think you’re a girl, and you are!
I have always likened the woke fanatic as a parallel to the islamic jihadist – fueled by an emotional and irrational goal that has been inculcated in their noggins for much of their lives. Just what is the difference from the madrasas that teach that there will be 100 virgins for each suicide bomber and the woke indoctrination centers that have been forced on our youth through our media/education industries. Both are manipulative tools to provide duped tools for those in power.
Not to mention those pesky XY and XX things.
Isn’t it a wonder how the prog/left will cling to DNA evidence when claiming evolution as the wellspring of our existence yet they will deny XX and XY when it suits their agenda. I do think hypocrisy is their operational mode at all times.
That’s the beauty of capitalism- you just can’t force people to spend their money in ways at odds with their interests and values. The only way to do that is to confiscate their money (through excessive taxation or authoritarianism) and redistribute it to the companies doing the bidding of the current government regime. Of course, then that government needs to be able to get votes every two or four or six years from the very people they’ve taken so much. So then what? How to force their preferred societal changes if they can’t stay in office long enough to cement those changes?
Hmmm- perhaps through the development of a huge, bureaucratic behemoth which will do your bidding whether in office or not? Perhaps through the mass censorship of all media, especially social and independent? Perhaps the liberalization of the electoral system through the exploitation of mail-in voting? Perhaps through unlimited use of executive action if, by some chance, you lose one camera Congress. Perhaps by drastically reformation of the Judicial Branch, either by extreme, violent pressure, or by just changing the makeup or number of judges? And if all this doesn’t work, just open the borders so a more compliant population will go along with your ESG prescription for societal change.
“The only way to do that is to confiscate their money . . .”
Like the Left is doing with its destructive “green mandates,” especially EVs.
Force auto manufacturers to make a product (EVs), and dealers to sell a product, that consumers do not want. What could possibly go wrong? EV inventory collecting dust.
Yeah remember how much money the government gave to Ford to subsidize the Model T. Oh that’s right, people just really wanted the product and they bought them by the millions. Now we have Democrats giving billions to their cronies in order to manufacture demand for a product that people don’t want.
My question is as follows: How many people that purchased an EV actually purchased a second EV? I know that I am considered a loyalty member for buying Hondas and Acuras for 30 years, but how many repeat customers are there for a Volt?
“How many people that purchased an EV actually purchased a second EV?”
Related to that, but worse:
Heard an interview with the manager of numerous dealerships on the East coast. Distressed customers, he noted, returned their new EVs (after only a few months) after having problems they never anticipated: The insane amount of time to recharge. Range that wasn’t even close to that advertised. The panic of hunting, while on a road trip, for a recharge station. The number of recharge stations that were out of order.
The manager then noted the obvious: Those consumers took a bath on their trade-ins — for a gas car.
Good to know, but not worthy of debate. And yet there will be the usual suspects vying for attention.
Resist the urge.