This Disney war has already paid off

livemint.com:

War may be hell, but it has also been great for Disney shareholders. What the peace will look like is the real question. The fight over who exactly sits on the entertainment giant’s board is in its final stages, with the company’s annual meeting slated for Wednesday.

Shareholders are choosing between three options promulgated by Disney and two activist investors. The result wouldn’t necessarily be a major shake-up—one activist proposal calls for replacing two members of the 12-person board, while the other would basically add three more members. But it has been rancorous nonetheless, particularly because both campaigns have been sharply critical of the company’s performance under the management of board member and Chief Executive Bob Iger.

A new wrinkle was added last week when one of the activists, Blackwells Capital, sued Disney over its deal with another activist, ValueAct, that was announced earlier this year. That performance is complicated by the fact that Disney’s stock has been on a tear of late. The share price has jumped 35% since the start of the year—more than triple the S&P 500’s performance, and even exceeding that of streaming star Netflix.

Meanwhile, Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Global—Disney’s two closest peers in the traditional media space—have seen their shares sink by more than a fifth each over that time. The two main sides in the proxy battle, Disney and activist Trian Partners, could each plausibly claim some credit for those gains.