![]() ![]() Right-wing influencers and celebrities helped fuel widespread boycotts against the company's top brand, Bud Light, after it sponsored Mulvaney, a trans advocate famous on TikTok for her bubbly and positive posts. ![]() Unlike his war with Disney, conservative outrage against AB InBev came well before DeSantis decided to take action against the Belgium beermaker. DeSantis and Disney are currently engaged in two separate lawsuits over the Republican's move to strip the theme park giant of its longstanding special government powers in Central Florida.Īsked by Fox's Jesse Watters if DeSantis would consider similar action against Disney, DeSantis said, "I don't know that we'd be the right one to do it." Florida's pension fund held $234 million in Disney stock as of March 31. Later in the year, DeSantis pushed the state pension board to adopt new rules that banned its investors from considering the environmental and social good of a company or fund when deciding where to put Florida's retirement assets, pushing back against the so-called ESG movement.ĭeSantis' latest salvo against what he calls "woke capitalism" also follows his high-profile clashes with another corporate titan, the Walt Disney Company, over the company's objections to a state law that restricts how schools teach about sexual orientation and gender identity. In early 2022, he threatened to hold Twitter shareholders accountable if they didn't sell the social media company to Tesla CEO Elon Musk. This is not the first time DeSantis has threatened to use Florida's $235 billion in pension investments as a cudgel in his political fights with corporate America. The company's stock price has fallen since then from $66 a share to $58, though it's still higher than its 52-week low of $44 from September 2022, which was well before the company's recent controversies. Derivative lawsuits are filed by shareholders on behalf of a company against a corporation's directors or officers alleging breach of duties.ĬNN has reached out to AB InBev for comment.Īt the end of March, Florida's pension fund held more than 682,000 shares of AB InBev valued at the time at nearly $46 million. Speaking to Fox News on Thursday night about the letter, DeSantis said the state may consider a "derivative lawsuit" against AB InBev. DeSantis oversees the board as a trustee along with the state's attorney general and chief financial officer, both also Republicans. "We must prudently manage the funds of Florida's hardworking law enforcement officers, teachers, firefighters, and first responders in a manner that focuses on growing returns, not subsidizing an ideological agenda through woke virtue signaling," DeSantis wrote in the letter to Lamar Taylor, the interim director of the State Board of Administration, the state agency that manages Florida's retirement funds for public workers. ![]() "All options are on the table," DeSantis wrote, as the state reviews the impact of AB InBev's recent financial downturn, though it's unclear what legal recourse the state might have to challenge a multinational corporation's business decisions. In a Thursday letter obtained by CNN, DeSantis suggests AB InBev "breached legal duties owed to its shareholders" when it decided to associate with "radical social ideologies." Sales of Bud Light have plummeted in the months since it entered into a minor partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney that precipitated a boycott from conservatives. Ron DeSantis is urging the state's pension fund manager to consider legal action against Bud Light's parent company amid conservative backlash to the beermaker's recent marketing efforts, the latest attempt by the Republican presidential candidate to inject himself and the state he runs into the country's culture wars. ![]()
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