BUSINESS The news at a glance
Consumer: P&G board survives challenge
Activist investor Nelson Peltz’s rancorous bid for a board seat at Procter & Gamble fell narrowly short this week, said Sharon Terlep and David Benoit in The Wall Street Journal. P&G, whose brands include Tide, Oral-B, and Pampers, has endured a bruising and expensive corporate proxy battle with Peltz, who owns $3.5 billion in stock in the consumer-goods giant and has demanded that the company make massive strategic changes “after a decade of market-share losses and stagnating profits.” P&G said preliminary votes showed all 11 current directors were re-elected, but Peltz disputed the result, saying he would wait until an independent auditor confirmed the vote. “If P&G’s victory is confirmed, it shouldn’t spend too much time fist pumping,” said Sarah Halzack and Brooke Sutherland in Bloomberg.com. Although Peltz appears to have been unsuccessful in gaining a board seat, he gained genuine momentum with his call for a turnaround effort. While the current board insisted progress has been made under CEO David Taylor, Peltz “painted a vastly different portrait of a company not innovating fast enough.” He bemoaned a lack of digital savvy and questioned why the company isn’t doing a better job maintaining and growing market share. Each time the company reports earnings, “this will dwell in the minds of shareholders.”