D-Day in the battle for the soul of Disney: Amid claims the House of Mouse has lost its way by going ‘woke’, can a corporate raider backed by Elon Musk seize the keys to the Magic Kingdom?

An imaginary Austrian duck is not the most obvious place to look for support when you are a boss of a global empire under siege from a corporate raider.

But Bob Iger, the chief executive of Disney, has drafted in cartoon character Professor Ludwig Von Drake, Donald Duck’s intellectual uncle, in a bare-knuckle fight for control over one of the world’s best loved businesses.

A crunch vote, that will decide the future of the company, is taking place at a shareholder meeting on Wednesday.

Investors will decide whether to snatch the keys to the Magic Kingdom from Iger and hand them to Nelson Peltz, one of America’s most aggressive investors.

Professor Von Drake appears in a video advising investors to reject Peltz, an octogenarian tycoon and father-in-law to David and Victoria Beckham’s son Brooklyn, who is trying to muscle his way onto the board.

Fairytale ending?: Bob Iger poses with Mickey Mouse at the Disney World theme park

Iger, who was summoned from retirement in 2022 to save Disney, also has some human supporters including film-maker George Lucas and the family of Walt Disney.

The parade of Peltz backers is led by Elon Musk, the Tesla and Twitter/X billionaire, who recently accused Disney of having a corporate ‘Gestapo’ that enforces woke rules on diversity, equality and inclusion.

The titanic clash amounts to a struggle for the very soul of Disney.

For generations its characters have epitomised wholesome family values.

Films such as Bambi and Mary Poppins, along with animated characters like Mickey Mouse, have been enjoyed by millions of children and parents around the world.

But disillusion has set in. Central to the disaffection, critics claim, is that Disney is losing its way by going ‘woke’.

Bob Iger and the board naturally disagree. But even the company’s most ardent fans on Wall Street would concede that the House of Mouse has seen better days.

Peltz, whose investment firm Trian has a $3.5billion (£2.7billion) stake, wants to grab seats on the board for himself and his sidekick Jay Rasulo, a former finance chief at the company. If they are installed, they will push for sweeping change.

Among its blizzard of condemnation, Trian cites a ‘leadership void,’ underperforming shares, ‘half-baked’ strategic initiatives, and a ‘conformist’ corporate culture.

For its part, Disney says Peltz, 81, is trying to ‘infiltrate’ the board and dismisses his ideas as ‘dangerous’ and ‘inane.’

Yet one doesn’t have to be a Peltz groupie to see that the famous Disney ‘magic’ has dissipated.

Common complaints include that the theme parks have become ridiculously expensive, as well as politically correct.

Recent films have been slated for being dull and formulaic.

And the company’s embrace of political correctness has propelled it into the front line of the culture wars gripping the US.

Last year, it closed Splash Mountain, one of the most popular rides at its Magic Kingdom park in Florida. Although it appeared few visitors appreciated the connection, the move followed claims it was tainted by Disney’s allegedly racist 1946 Br’er Rabbit and Uncle Remus film, Song Of The South.

The attraction is scheduled to reopen later this year – racially cleansed – as Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, featuring Disney’s first black Princess.

Many of the most popular animated films – created in a different era – carry racism or sexism warnings. Dumbo is flagged up for its raucous black crows, and Lady And The Tramp for its sinister Siamese cats.

The theme parks, once an innocent escape into a fantasy world, have become bastions of progressive values.

Disneyland in California last year held a ‘Pride Nite’.

Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and friends celebrated the ‘LGBTQIA+ community and allies’ by parading in rainbow-themed outfits.

But shovelling wokeness down its audiences’ gullets has sometimes produced bleak results. 

The company celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2023 with the release last November of Wish, a super-hyped animated blockbuster. This introduced Asha, the latest non-white incarnation of the Disney Princess and a heroine leading a diverse band of friends in a revolution against a white male patriarchy.

It was a box office flop. Film industry bible Variety called it ‘the latest crack in the studio’s once-invincible armour’.

Peltz, a supporter of Donald Trump in the race for the White House, recently challenged Disney for making movies with predominantly female and black casts.

Iger, who once toyed with the idea of running for president as a Democrat, says Black Panther, featuring the first mainstream black superhero, is one of the proudest achievements of his career.

Whatever the politics, last year was marked by a string of box office disasters including Indiana Jones And The Dial of Destiny and Toy Story spin-off Lightyear, controversially featuring a gay kiss.

Even Iger himself has admitted there was too much focus on ‘messaging’ – making woke points – and not enough on telling an enthralling story.

With a combined age of more than 150, Iger and Peltz may both be in the twilight of their careers. Neither wants to risk shambling off the corporate stage in defeat.

When he came out of retirement, Iger was greeted as a conquering hero. But if he was expecting to sail through on past glories, he will have been sorely disillusioned.

As if Peltz were not enough, a second activist investor, Blackwells Capital, said last week it is suing Disney over ‘credible suspicion of wrongdoing’ over its dealings with a hedge fund.

Disney has dismissed the suit as baseless and a ‘desperate’ bid for attention.

On his return, Iger was faced with a pile of intractable problems, not least of which is finding a successor to himself. His initial two-year comeback contract has been extended to 2026.

Many of his most trusted lieutenants had left the business, leaving him looking isolated. He does, however, have some influential backers, including the Disney family, who have no real control over the company but are seen as keepers of Uncle Walt’s flame. He is also supported by his legendary predecessor as chief executive, Michael Eisner, who is now – bizarrely – the chairman of Portsmouth football club.

This is not the first time the Disney empire has been in crisis.

In its long history it has seen boardroom coups and a hostile bid in the 1980s.

The cartoon studio started by Walt and his brother Roy in 1923 is now a global empire with revenues of nearly $90billion last year.

It has a string of TV networks, a cruise line and a stable of studios including Pixar, Lucasfilm and Searchlight.

In 2019, Disney paid $71billion – a sum Peltz and others say was far too much – for the film and TV assets of Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox.

In its assault on Disney, Trian branded the Fox takeover as ‘strategically flawed’, and claimed it was motivated by an ‘over the top’ pay package for Iger.

Peltz has also savaged Disney over its loss-making streaming operations. Iger moved into streaming with the launch of Disney+ in 2019, hoping the service would soon become a rival to Netflix. Subscribers have signed up in droves, but it has run up dizzying losses.

These woes and others, including Covid closures of the theme parks, have sent shares down around 40 per cent over three years.

That has not stopped Disney from launching a blistering counter-attack.

In a video message to shareholders, the company warns it would be ‘disruptive and destructive’ to let Peltz on the board, and accuses him of being motivated by ‘vanity.’

Disney, it says, ‘could suffer the same fate as other great companies that Peltz has previously infiltrated such as General Electric and DuPont’.

There are early signs Iger may be working some of his old corporate magic and the shares have recovered some of their falls. Streaming losses have been cut and the company expects the operation to be profitable by autumn.

Cost-cutting has pleased investors, as have moves to boost the dividends.

The general feeling in Wall Street is that while Iger has his faults, he understands this unique, creative company.

Having a sharp-elbowed, profit-driven outsider with no relevant experience like Peltz run the show would be worse.

Wall Street, in recent days, has rallied behind Iger, especially after quarterly results last month showed Disney having more success in reining back its costs and announcing a slew of new projects.

‘I remain a Nelson Peltz fan, but also believe that Bob Iger is capable of maintaining the company’s momentum with or without Peltz,’ wrote pundit Stephen Guilfoyle this week.

Dan Coatsworth, of leading stock broker AJ Bell, says: ‘Peltz’s views are worth hearing.

‘But Disney is not a broken business – it can be fixed if they go back to the basics of entertaining people.’

Iger likes to present himself as calm in the fact of a crisis.

‘I don’t agonise over [my] work very much,’ he has said.

‘I don’t know if it’s a quirk of brain chemistry or a defence mechanism developed in reaction to some family chaos in my youth, or the result of years of discipline, but I tend not to feel too much anxiety when things go awry.’

That sang-froid will be tested to the limit as the fate of Disney swings in the balance this week.

As Walt Disney himself once observed: ‘A kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.’

According to that school of thought, the threat from Peltz may have been the jolt Disney’s top brass needed to turn the business around.

CLASH OF THE TITANS 

King of Disneyland

Bob Iger, 73, is a business titan with a pay packet and lifestyle to match.

Estimates of his wealth vary, but it runs at least into the hundreds of millions of dollars. His pay last year alone from Disney was nearly $32 million.

He and his second wife, former journalist Willow Bay, have a seven bedroom, nine-bathroom mansion in LA that cost them $19.5million and is now worth $33million. A few years ago, they sold a luxury flat in New York’s Fifth Avenue for $18.75million.

Iger’s gilded life contrasts with his modest upbringing in Oceanside, a small, largely working class town on Long Island.

His father was a navy veteran who suffered from manic depression. As a young man, Iger believed his father was disappointed in life and vowed not to share that fate.

He is a workaholic, rising almost every day at 4.15am to think, read and work out.

Tellingly, one of his heroes is a 98-year-old sushi chef called Jiro Ono, whom he describes as the ‘living embodiment of the Japanese word shokunin, the endless pursuit of perfection’.

Iger began his career doing ‘menial jobs’ at US broadcaster ABC and after a dizzying ascent, became boss of Disney for the first time in 2005. His initial stint as ruler of the Magic Kingdom was hailed as one of the most successful reigns ever in the history of American business.

He presided over a string of deals, including the $7.4billion takeover of Pixar, the animation studio behind Toy Story, and the purchase of Marvel Entertainment for $4billion. In 2012 he outbid Rupert Murdoch for Lucasfilm, the makers of Star Wars. Then, in 2019, he bought most of Murdoch’s 20th Century Fox for $71billion.

Iger embraced streaming, which allows subscribers to watch TV shows or films over the internet, with the launch of Disney+ in 2019.

Having postponed his retirement four times, he actually stepped down in 2020, making way for a hand-picked successor, Bob Chapek.

During his time out, Iger bought a private jet and commissioned a bigger yacht. According to Bloomberg, he toyed with running for president and was said to be ‘open to’ serving Joe Biden, ‘maybe as ambassador to China’.

The Chapek interlude turned out to be brief and unhappy. By late 2022, Iger had made a stunning comeback. Now he has met his potential nemesis in the menacing form of Nelson Peltz.

Boardroom aggressor

Billionaire: Nelson Peltz is one of the most ruthless corporate raiders on the planet

Billionaire Nelson Peltz, 81, is one of the most ruthless corporate raiders on the planet.

Through his firm Trian, set up in 2005, he takes stakes in firms he believes are underperforming and agitates for change.

He has muscled his way on to the board of FTSE 100 consumer goods giant Unilever. Peltz (pictured right) was also the catalyst for one of the most bitter takeover battles in British corporate history, the takeover of much-loved chocolate company Cadbury by American cheese-seller Kraft in 2010.

He claims to work ‘collaboratively’ and help managers build their businesses. At Disney, however, he is seen as a hostile force.

Whatever one thinks of his methods, they have made him rich with a personal fortune of $1.7billion, according to Forbes. He has acquired a portfolio of homes, private jets and helicopters. He has also fathered ten children, most of them with his third wife, former fashion model Claudia Heffner Peltz, who at nearly 70 sports blonde mermaid tresses and looks decades younger.

Thanks to the marriage of youngest daughter Nicola to Brooklyn Beckham, Peltz has Posh ‘n’ Becks for in-laws. The wedding was held at Montsorrel, his vast 27-bedroom oceanfront mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, worth an estimated $334million.

Peltz also owns High Winds, a 130-acre property in Bedford, New York state, reported to have its own lake and waterfall, an indoor ice hockey rink and a flock of albino peacocks. An old-school alpha male, he appears to revel in his hard-nosed reputation.

‘What sense is being a billionaire if you’re not a bully?’ was his retort when recently confronted with accusations of browbeating Nicola’s wedding planners. Before his marriage to Claudia in the 1980s, he squired the most beautiful actresses of the day including the late Dame Diana Rigg and Victoria Principal, who played Pam Ewing in the TV series Dallas.

This post first appeared on Dailymail.co.uk