At long last, Nelson Peltz, lovingly known to my loyal readers as “the Smiling Crocodile” for his past boardroom chicanery, dropped his long-promised white paper on Disney this past week. At 133 pages, Peltz’s PowerPoint passes the ostensible heft test, one important measure of relevance on Wall Street. But does it pass the substance test? To me, it’s a mixed bag. 

On the one hand, the latest version of his plan to “Restore the Magic” does a decent job of identifying Disney’s problems: the obvious and ubiquitously mentioned lack of a clear succession plan; the $14 billion lost to date in Disney’s direct-to-consumer businesses; the recent spate of films that have disappointed at the box office; the decline in Disney’s operating margins; the underwhelming returns, so far, on Bob Iger’s decision to spend $72 billion on the 21st Century Fox assets; the failure to take action, starting in 2015, when ESPN started shedding cable subscribers, and on and on.