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Opposition to the re-election of Michael Eisner as Disney CEO was stronger than expected Wednesday with almost half the shareholders voting against him raising questions about how much longer he can stay in control of the company he's led for nearly 20 years. After the vote, Eisner faced calls to quit and the company was urged to reorganize its senior positions.
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - About 43 percent of Walt Disney shareholders voted to oppose the re-election of Chairman and CEO Michael Eisner to Disney's board, raising doubts about how much longer he can stay in control of the company he's led for nearly 20 years.
The preliminary results of the vote were released by the company at the end of what was an often quarrelsome five-hour annual shareholder meeting in Philadelphia Wednesday.
"This is without a doubt the most withholding of support for a CEO of a major company that I have ever seen. It's really an expression of dissatisfaction," said Kevin Calabrese, an analyst with Argus Research.
The company said about 1.8 billion shares, or nearly 87 percent of the total shares outstanding, were represented in the proxy vote. Nearly 772 million shares opposed Eisner's re-election to the board. Several prominent pension funds had announced publicly in recent days that they planned on withholding their votes for Eisner.
Following Wednesday's vote, California's Calpers, the nation's largest pension fund, called for Eisner to resign by the end of the year and urged Disney to split the role of chairman and CEO. Calpers owns more than 9.9 million shares of Disney. The pension fund had said it would withhold its vote for Eisner at Wednesday's meeting, but this is the first time Calpers has specifically called for Eisner's ouster.
"This discontent is too wide and way too deep in the marketplace, and it has led us to believe that Eisner should go and the board should get quickly to work on planning for an orderly transition," Sean Harrigan, president of the board of administration for Calpers, said in a written statement.
Disney had previously said it expected at least 30 percent of shareholders to oppose Eisner's re-election to the board. But Stanley Gold, one of two ex-board members who is seeking Eisner's ouster, accurately predicted at the beginning of Wednesday's meeting that more than 40 percent of shareholders would withhold their votes for Eisner.
Greedy jerk faces!
