When Bob Iger took over as Disney CEO one of the first things he did was mend the bridge with Pixar, a move that eventually led Steve Jobs, Pixar’s largest stockholder, to sell the company to Disney. As it turns out, that move made Jobs the largest Disney shareholder. This gave him great influence on the Disney board of directors until the day of his death.
After his death, his wife Laurene Powell Jobs inherited the Disney stock making her the largest holder. According to a story in Barron’s, she has now sold 64.3 million Disney shares, or roughly half of the shares Jobs made in the sale of Pixar. This means she is no longer the largest shareholder, merely the 4th largest.
This drops Powell Jobs’ ownership of Disney to less than 5%, which means she no long has to disclose transactions involving Disney shares under SEC rules.
Powell Jobs now spends time working with the Emerson Collective, which does philanthropy inspired investing on topics like education, immigration reform, and environmental issues. Presumably this new cash will help forward that mission.
(Photo of Jon Hamm and Laurene Powell Jobs by Steve Jurvetson FLickr cc-by-sa 2.0 license)
Good lord, that’s a lot of money right there! and it is only half of her stock holdings…
Who are the Top Three? Lucas? Perlmutter?
At $110.0 per share right now, that comes to, oh gosh, like 7.07 BILLION dollars.
Comments are closed.