Activist Peltz claims Procter & Gamble board seat after vote count

CINCINNATI — Activist investor Nelson Peltz has won a seat on the Procter & Gamble board after a narrow vote, according to Peltz’s hedge fund.

Peltz’s Trian Fund Management reports a weeks-long count of shareholder votes found Peltz was elected by about a 43,000-margin out of more than two billion shares that were cast.

P&G stated the results "are still preliminary and are subject to a review and challenge period during which both parties will have the opportunity to review the results for any discrepancies."

P&G said it will disclose the final results after receiving the final certified report, which it expects in the weeks ahead.

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Trian stated the official preliminary vote count from the independent inspector of elections reported him in the lead in the vote for a seat on the Cincinnati-based consumer product giant's board.

“Trian greatly appreciates the support we have received, and we are gratified that the Independent Inspector’s tabulation shows that shareholders have elected Nelson Peltz to the P&G Board of Directors,” the Trian stated. “The Inspector’s report represents an independent, careful tabulation of all proxies and ballots submitted to the Inspector by both P&G and Trian. Trian strongly urges P&G to accept the Inspector’s tabulation and not waste further time and shareholder money contesting the outcome of the Annual Meeting.”

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After the vote, the company did not immediately release a vote count, and Peltz did not concede the fight.

The fight was widely thought to be the largest corporate proxy battle in history.

P&G fought back against Petlz, acknowledging that it is spending at $35 million in its bid to keep Peltz off its board of directors.

Peltz is the founder of Trian Fund Management and has a $3.5 billion position in P&G.

“As one of P&G’s largest shareholders, and given P&G’s disappointing results over the past decade, Trian has a keen interest in helping the company address the challenges it is facing,” Trian said before the vote.

Trian identifies those “challenges” as shrinking market share, excessive bureaucracy and corporate costs and more.

Peltz has fought proxy battles at Heinz in 2006 — in which he won two out of five board seats — and DuPont, in which he faltered, media reports say. Observers have called him an “activist investor.”

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P&G maintains it has accomplished its most significant “portfolio transformation” in its history over the past two years, having “divested, discontinued, or consolidated more than 100 brands and simplified its product portfolio from 16 to 10 categories.”

The company also insists that it has been good to shareholders, saying it has returned $100 billion to them in the form of dividends, share exchanges and share repurchases over the past 10 years, with about $38 billion in value returned over fiscal years 2016 and 2017.

P&G has about 11,000 Ohio employees, with about 10,000 employees in the Cincinnati area and about 3,400 in downtown Cincinnati.

And some of these jobs could be at stake. During the proxy battle, P&G previously said that Peltz’ plan could mean moving jobs out of Cincinnati and he has been calling for “deep cost cutting.”

Locally, P&G helps oversee a massive distribution operation in Union, recently taking over part of the services there from Impact Fulfillment Services. The 1.7 million-square-foot center near Dayton International Airport opened in 2015. About 800 people were employed there when it opened.

More than a third of P&G’s products moves through the facility, with the help of a third-party supply chain manager, Exel, which has about 600 employees at the Union center. P&G also has a “beauty and innovation” center and campus in Mason.