It's a small world, after all, when you set up 1,000 chairs for your annual meeting but draw 42 not-so-warm bodies thanks to an epic snowstorm.
"It's an unusual morning and an unusual meeting," Walt Disney Co. CEO Michael Eisner told the assembled at the Colorado Convention Center on Wednesday. Disney usually draws 1,500 to 15,000 depending on the location.
This year's site was Denver, as Disney continues to move the meeting to give shareholders from around the country a chance to attend.
Disney did not forecast that there would be a little too much snow white on Tuesday and Wednesday, though. "How you got here when the roads are all closed is beyond me," Eisner said. "Many of you had to come by skis and snowshoes."
Reschedule? No. Eisner said Disney's annual meeting Wednesday was 13 full months after last year's meeting - the last possible day the Securities and Exchange Commission allows.
Shareholder Carl Richard made it by walking and hitchhiking. He was rewarded with an opportunity to ask one of about a dozen shareholders' questions. (The first, from a young girl: "What's your favorite ride at
Disneyland?" Eisner: "Next time you come to Disneyland, demand 'a bug's land.' "
Most of the other folks at the meeting were out-of-towners who came to Denver early, before flights were canceled, and stayed downtown or with friends.
Lori Fields, a former Disney employee came with her husband from California and stayed with friends Warren Foltz and Kitty Sitar of Lakewood. All four came to the meeting.
Fields said "There are cast members who can't afford cars, can't afford insurance," yet Disney still gave Eisner a $5 million bonus. "We're still collectors, we still love Disney. We just don't like his bonus."
Disney's bonuses, Eisner said in response, are part of the "supply and demand world" in which entertainment talent is always offered millions to jump ship for a competitor. And managing the company in 2002 was "as difficult as in any year in which we had great success."
The meeting stretched for more than two hours as Eisner and executives Robert Iger and Tom Staggs ran through a presentation that acknowledged the weakness in the company's financial performance and highlighted the company's entertainment, past and present.
A protest by anti-sweatshop activists went off earlier than scheduled, as the New York-based members of the No More Sweatshops Coalition walked from their downtown hotels to the convention center at about 7:30 a.m. "Turnout has been lessened," remarked Russ Agdern, more than an hour later, as snow coated his hair.
