Procter & Gamble is adding Nelson Peltz to its board of directors, ending a proxy battle with the activist investor who has been seeking to shake up the consumer products giant.
The announcement came after Peltz last month claimed to have won a shareholder vote to add him to the board, beating out incumbent director former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo by a fraction of a percent. The company claimed, however, that the vote was too close to call.
On Friday, Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble Co. said Zedillo and 10 others were re-elected. But it said that because Peltz had garnered so much shareholder support, he will be given a seat on the board starting March 1. Joseph Jimenez, the CEO of pharmaceutical company Novartis, was also added to the board.
Peltz's Trian Fund Management owns about $3.5 billion in P&G shares and has urged the maker of products like Pampers diapers, Tide detergent and Crest toothpaste to streamline its corporate structure and cut costs.
Procter & Gamble said it had "numerous discussions" with Peltz about the board seat leading up to Friday's announcement. It said they agreed the company should not to take on excessive debt, slash research and development spending or be broken up.
ESPN and other channels return to DirecTV with a new Disney deal after a nearly 2-week blackout
DirecTV announced Saturday it had reached a deal with Walt Disney Co. that will restore ESPN and ABC-owned stations to its service after a nearly 2-week dispute that blacked out those networks for millions of viewers across the U.S.
The end of the impasse came in time for sports fans to watch ESPN's slate of college football games on DirecTV. It also will ensure that ABC's telecast of the Emmy Awards on Sunday night will be available in more major markets where viewers subscribe to DirecTV's pay service.
ABC had been unavailable since Sept. 1 on DirecTV in several markets where the station is owned by Disney. Those were located in the San Francisco Bay Area; Fresno, California; New York; Chicago; Philadelphia; Houston; and Raleigh, North Carolina.
DirecTV's 11 million subscribers abruptly lost access to ESPN, the ABC-owned stations and other Disney-owned channels such as FX and National Geographic during the Labor Day weekend in a dispute over carriage fees and programming flexibility.
Some viewers were watching the fourth round of the U.S. Open tennis tournament when ESPN suddenly went dark and others were getting ready to watch a college football showdown between LSU and Southern California.
The impasse also kept the NFL's opening game of Monday Night Football off of DirecTV's service.
Financial details of Disney's new deal with DirecTV weren't disclosed as part of Saturday's announcement. DirecTV's payments to Disney will be based on "market-based" pricing, according to the announcement about the deal.
The agreement also will give DirecTV the ability to offer Disney's video streaming services a la carte as well as in its own bundled packages. DirecTV won the right to include ESPN's forthcoming direct-to-consumer... Read More