Nelson Peltz says new Disney chairman Gorman will find a ‘respectable CEO’

7:16 pm Wednesday, November 13th, 2024

By Svea Herbst-Bayliss

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Hedge fund manager Nelson Peltz, who lost a bruising boardroom challenge at Walt Disney this year, is confident the company’s new board chairman will find a “respectable CEO” to replace Bob Iger.

Peltz said James Gorman, a former Morgan Stanley chief who was recently named the Disney board’s chairman, was a “good man” and expressed confidence Gorman would run a thorough search process and solve the company’s succession planning problems.

“He will get a respectable CEO in there,” Peltz said, adding that he thinks the company will have a new CEO before the end of 2025. He was speaking at the CNBC Delivering Alpha Conference.

The company last month said it would name a new chief in early 2026. The new boss would replace Iger, who returned to the company to take the top job in 2022 after the board fired the CEO Iger had handpicked to replace him.

Peltz’s Trian Fund Management ran a bruising proxy battle at Disney, criticizing the company’s streaming division, succession plans and stock price but lost his bid to join the board.

Investors voted in early April to keep him and a former company chief financial officer Peltz had nominated as a second dissident candidate off the board.

On Wednesday, Peltz blamed large index funds that manage trillions of dollars for investors for his loss, saying the “index funds did not want me to win.”

After the vote, Peltz quickly exited the stock, saying that he sold when the stock was trading around $119 a share. He made a profit since he bought in when the stock was trading around $80 a share, he said.

In a regulatory filing on Wednesday, Peltz’s fund said it sold its final shares of Disney during the third quarter, liquidating some 2.6 million shares. When Peltz announced his proxy fight in October 2023, regulatory filings showed Trian owned 30 million shares.

He warned Disney that he is watching from afar and could return for another battle if the stock price drops more. “If the stock goes back to the $80s, I’ll be back. I promise,” he said.

Disney’s stock closed at $102.72 a share on Wednesday.

(Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Jamie Freed)