Ari Emmanuel-led sports and entertainment giant Endeavor is going private. What does that mean for the company after three years of public trading?
Also: After months of speculation and a headline-making final week, the Disney proxy war is finally over. The House of Mouse and CEO Bob Iger emerged victorious over activist investor Nelson Peltz and his Trian Partners hedge fund, whose “Restore the Magic” campaign sought to intervene in what Peltz deemed “go woke, go broke” tack at Disney. So why did multiple shareholder advisory firms back Peltz in the first place? Kim Masters and Matt Belloni dive in.
Private Endeavor(s)? After three years of public trading, Endeavor will sell off parts of the company in the process of going private. “It was Ari’s drive to have a company that he could take public. So he took it public, and they felt undervalued for a while,” Masters explains. “Clearly they're not going to sell William Morris Endeavor the agency, and they're not going to sell TKO, which I like to call ‘Fight Club’ — the WWE and UFC people — but everything else is on the table, it appears.”
Why Peltz? Following Disney and Iger’s victory over Peltz and Trian partners, some were left wondering why multiple shareholder advisory firms — whose endorsements carry big weight with investors — backed the dissident shareholder in the first place. “Well, they felt that having someone on the board to scream at the rest of the board members about the succession issue might help them figure it out. There's no reason to believe Bob Iger when he says he's leaving in 2026. He has said that many many times before,” Belloni says.
It’s just… good business? Following Peltz’s claims of “wokeness,” Iger has stated that the company is not trying to “advance any kind of agenda.” “The diversity question is a very complicated one, you know, ‘Why was there a female lead in the new Star Wars trilogy?’ Well, Star Wars has traditionally been a male-dominated franchise. So it makes great business sense to put a woman at the center of the new franchise” Belloni says. “Just like Disney bought Marvel, because they were leaning heavily female with their princess business, and they wanted to shore up young males. I mean, that’s smart business.”