Carl Icahn speaking at Delivering Alpha in New York on September 13, 2016.
David A. Grogan | CNBC
Activist investor Carl Icahn lost his fight with McDonald’s on Thursday, saying shareholders were unaffected by his animal welfare concerns.
Preliminary vote counts during the company’s annual shareholders ’meeting showed that Icahn’s board candidates received only votes of about 1% of the outstanding shares, McDonald’s said.
“Moving forward, McDonald’s’s board of directors and leadership team remain focused on continuing to take actions that maintain and advance our values while committing to serving the interests of all of our shareholders,” the company said in a statement.
Icahn owns only about 200 McDonald’s shares, a small stake that did not give him much influence over the votes. And, as the results show, he failed to win over his fellow shareholders by criticizing McDonald’s environmental, social, and corporate governance commitments and calling big Wall Street companies “hypocritical.”
McDonald’s chairman Enrique Hernandez, Jr. said in a prepared statement obtained by CNBC that Icahn was invited to speak about his nominations at the meeting, but that he withdrew two days ago. Icahn did not attend the meeting.
An Icahn representative declined to comment to CNBC.
Icahn’s power struggle began in February when the billionaire publicly criticized McDonald’s for failing to meet its original deadline to eliminate its suppliers’ use of gestation boxes for pregnant pigs. He also stated that the company should completely ban the use of boxes, but has since changed the scope of its commitment.
For its part, the Chicago-based company has blamed the Covid-19 pandemic and African swine fever outbreaks for delaying the original 2022 deadline it set a decade ago. By the end of this year, McDonald’s expects that between 85% and 90% of the U.S. pork supply will come from pigs that are not kept in gestation boxes if it is confirmed that they are pregnant. McDonald’s has said that completely eliminating the use of the boxes would increase its costs and higher prices for customers.
McDonald’s said in a presentation in early April that it expected to spend about $ 16 million on the representation fight with Icahn.
The Humane Society of the United States had submitted a shareholder proposal echoing Icahn’s criticism, but withdrew it. The proposal asked the company to confirm that it would achieve its previous goal of eliminating the confinement of pregnant pigs in 2022. Otherwise, the organization asked McDonald’s to disclose more information about its pig supply chain. . These shareholder proposals are not binding, but may send a message to the boards of directors about public support for the company’s practices.
Icahn is waging a similar fight with Kroger, the largest supermarket chain operator in the United States at the annual Kroger meeting scheduled for June 23.