Disney Winning Proxy Fight Against Trian With More Than Half of Votes Cast

Its backing is a major coup for Disney CEO Bob Iger, who is trying to fend off Trian’s attempt to get two seats on the company’s board while it is in the middle of a dramatic turnaround attempt. 

, the Baltimore-based money manager, said Monday it also plans to support Disney. It owns about 9.3 million Disney shares, or about 0.5% of the total. 

There are no guarantees Disney will remain ahead, given that investors are still casting votes and can change them through the annual meeting Wednesday. 

Trian is aiming to get seats on the board for Peltz and former Disney finance chief Jay Rasulo. Just days ago, Peltz was leading the race to replace Disney director Maria Elena Lagomasino with about 20% of shares voted, but Rasulo was trailing.

The hedge fund has support from investors including Neuberger Berman, which voiced frustration over Disney’s handling of succession, and the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the nation’s largest pension fund. 

The proxy battle is expected to be the most expensive of all time—topping Trian’s 2017 clash with

—as both sides spend millions courting shareholders. Another activist, Blackwells Capital, is also jostling for board seats, but gaining little traction.

Iger and his investor relations team, along with several current directors, have been crisscrossing the country in recent weeks suggesting to major shareholders that letting Peltz join the board would be disruptive and counterproductive.

Peltz and his team at Trian, meanwhile, have argued that the Disney board has failed to deliver strong returns to investors and needs help running an orderly CEO succession process after a botched handoff in 2020.

Trian controls about 32.3 million shares, or 1.8% of the total. The fund has been working alongside Ike Perlmutter, the former Marvel Entertainment chairman who is one of Disney’s largest individual shareholders and who gave Trian the right to vote his more than 25 million shares.

The campaign has proved a closer contest than many on Wall Street initially expected. The two major shareholder-advisory firms split their recommendations, with Institutional Shareholder Services advising shareholders to back Peltz and all but one of Disney’s nominees and Glass Lewis endorsing all of Disney’s slate.

Disney received support from several big-name investors, including “Star Wars” creator George Lucas, Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of

founder Steve Jobs, and the grandchildren of company founders Walt and Roy Disney.

While individual investors hold an outsize portion of Disney shares and are expected to play a big role, the fate of the proxy battle lies heavily in the hands of just a handful of large shareholders. They include money-management firms Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street, which together own more than 16% of the company’s shares.

Write to Lauren Thomas at lauren.thomas@wsj.com and Robbie Whelan at robbie.whelan@wsj.com