Activist hedge fund Trian Partners plans to nominate two candidates to Walt Disney’s board of directors, intensifying a campaign against the media group that is expected to be one of the most contested proxy battles in years, according to a report by The Financial Times.
Trian, which controls a roughly $3bn stake in Disney, has been at odds with the group since January. The battle cooled in February when Peltz called off a proxy fight after chief executive Bob Iger unveiled plans to revive the company. But last month the hedge fund renewed its campaign.
Iger last month named two new directors — outgoing Morgan Stanley chief executive James Gorman and former Sky CEO Sir Jeremy Darroch. Trian will put forward its co-founder Nelson Peltz and former Disney executive Jay Rasulo at the company’s annual shareholder meeting next year, it said on Thursday.
“The root cause of Disney’s underperformance, in our view, is a board that is too closely connected to a long-tenured [chief executive] and too disconnected from shareholders’ interests,” Trian wrote in a statement, the report added.
