Revenge?? Disney’s Iger Ousts Marvel Chairman & Lays Off 7K Employees; Cites Cost-Cutting Moves 

Edited by: TJVNews.com

It appears that the embattled Walt Disney Company is once again making headlines for shakeups in the top brass as well as their ongoing conflicts with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis,

According to published reports, billionaire philanthropist and chairman of Marvel Entertainment, Isaac Perlmutter, 80, has been ousted from his position. The company cited cost-cutting moves as part of layoffs affecting 7,000 employees.

The Daily Mail of the UK reported that Perlmutter had been in a running squabble with Disney CEO Bob Iger over Perlmutter’s repeated backing of activist investor Nelson Peltz’s failed bid to join the company’s board of directors as part of a campaign to slash costs.

In a phone call on Wednesday in which he was told that he was being let go from the employ of Disney, Perlmutter was also informed that Marvel Entertainment, a small consumer products division run separately from mammoth Marvel Studios, would be folded into other business units, sources told the New York Times.

Marvel Entertainment is focused mostly on consumer products and is not part of the lucrative Marvel Studios division led by Kevin Feige, according to a report in The Hollywood Reporter. Also given his pink slip was Rob Steffens, the co-president of Marvel Entertainment.

In  1998, Perlmutter acquired Marvel via Toy Biz, a company that owned the exclusive license to produce toys based on Marvel’s characters, according to the Financial Times. Perlmutter’s financial success came as an investor in distressed assets and he began working with Marvel in the mid-1990s. The FT also reported that after the group went into bankruptcy, Perlmutter fended off Carl Icahn and other investors to gain control of Marvel.

In 2009, Perlmutter sold the comic book giant to Disney for $4 billion, with an agreement that Disney would keep him under their employ as chairman of Marvel.  He was reportedly paid $800 million in cash and a massive grant of Disney stock, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The sale was completed under the aegis of Disney top honcho, Bob Iger.

Things came to a boiling point in 2015, when Perlmutter had serious disputes with Feige, and it was then that he was sidelined by Iger who moved Marvel Studios from the division that Perlmutter operated into Disney’s larger film operations.  Speaking to CBNC in February, Iger said that Perlmutter wanted to fire Feige.   “I promised Ike the job that he would continue to run Marvel after that, not forever, necessarily,” Iger said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “And in 2015 he was intent on firing Kevin Feige, who was running Marvel’s studio … and I thought that was a mistake and stepped in to prevent that from happening.”

The announcement of Perlmutter’s termination followed a proxy-war that upended the iconic company, with key Disney shareholders Peltz and Perlmutter accusing Iger of running the company into the ground by spending too much money, the Daily Mail of the UK reported.

The report also indicated that according to a Disney shareholder letter, Perlmutter had requested on numerous occasions that Peltz be added to the Disney board. Earlier this year, the Associated Press reported that Peltz announced that he would seek a seat on the board of the entertainment company, citing a failed succession after Iger departed about two years ago and named Bob Chapek as his replacement. Peltz cited “over-the-top” compensation for executives and other issues.

Perlmutter had been lobbying for Peltz’s inclusion on the board since July 2022, contacting former CEO Bob Chapek, director Safra Catz and other senior executives on his behalf.

Peltz ultimately  called off the proxy fight with Disney one day after Iger announced a major restructuring of the company that included thousands of job being cut..

Iger told CNBC that, “Our filings indicate that both Ike and Nelson were working together to try to encourage the board or convince the board to put Nelson on the board.”

A longtime friend of former President Donald Trump, Perlmutter was also said to have served as something of an informal adviser to Trump’s Veterans Affairs department.

The Financial Times reported that in a 2019 book on his tenure at Disney, Iger described Perlmutter as “a legendarily tough, reclusive character” and as having a reputation for being “penurious to the extreme”. But while he acknowledged having “disagreements” with Perlmutter, he “respected where he’d come from in his life”.

Perlmutter immigrated to the U.S. from Israel with just $250 in 1967 and sold toys on the streets of Brooklyn, where he was introduced to Marvel.  He is also a veteran of the Six-Day War in 1967 between Israel and neighboring states Egypt, Jordan and Syria, as was reported by Forbes.  Wikipedia reported that although Perlmutter never attended college, he taught himself how to read a balance sheet and supposedly became good at spotting overlooked value in weak and distressed companies.

In 1993, Perlmutter and his wife established the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Professorship and Chair in Cell Biology at the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine (part of the New York University School of Medicine). Perlmutter’s wife Laura has served as a trustee on the NYU Medical Center’s Board of Trustees since 1993 and Perlmutter has served as a trustee since 2014, as was reported by Wikipedia. The couple have donated over $50 million to cancer research at NYU Langone Medical Center. This was followed by a $5 million gift from their foundation to establish the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cosmetic Plastic Surgery Center at NYU Langone.  They also gave a $9 million gift to fund cancer research at NYU Langone and the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, and a $1 million gift to support the medical center’s Beatrice W. Welters Breast Health Outreach and Navigation Program, according to Wikipedia.

In the spring of 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Isaac and Laura Perlmutter took part in funding the donation of an estimated 50 tons of food to the Palm Beach County Food Bank, Wikipedia reported. In addition to the food bank, the couple contributed to providing meals to the staff at both Good Samaritan Medical Center and St. Mary’s Medical Center, as well as five hospitals in New York City.

Issac and Laura Perlmutter are also supporters and contributors to The Innocence Project which exonerates the wrongly convicted through DNA testing and reforms the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice.   –   (Additional reporting by Fern Sidman)