Rewriting the Proxy Playbook: Trian Partners vs. Disney Case Study
Trian Partners’ campaign to wrest two board seats from The Walt Disney Company already stands as a proxy contest for the ages and will rewrite the playbook for many contested meetings in the years to come. In addition to the significant outreach to the institutional investors (“usual institutional suspects,”) the campaign required substantially increased retail […]
Patrick J. McHugh is Founder and Senior Managing Director and Bruce H. Goldfarb is the President and Chief Executive Officer at Okapi Partners. This post is based on a Okapi memorandum by Mr. McHugh, Mr. Goldfarb, and Lila Caminiti.
Trian Partners’ campaign to wrest two board seats from The Walt Disney Company already stands as a proxy contest for the ages and will rewrite the playbook for many contested meetings in the years to come. In addition to the significant outreach to the institutional investors (“usual institutional suspects,”) the campaign required substantially increased retail engagement due to Disney’s massive retail holder base. The process effectively involved two simultaneous campaigns: one campaign to sway hundreds of financial institutions, and another to energize the retail base of several million shareholders, which typically remains apathetic toward proxy voting. Examining the retail and institutional campaigns as two pieces of one whole provides important insights into this game-changer of a campaign, and teaches practitioners some valuable lessons.
