From Investingdaily.com: Fresh off a proxy battle victory
that gave him control of the board at Canadian Pacific Railway, activist
investor Bill Ackman is now taking aim at the world’s biggest consumer products
company, Procter & Gamble.
On Thursday, news broke that Ackman’s investment firm,
Pershing Square Capital Management, had purchased $2 billion worth of Procter
& Gamble shares. That had many in the investment community wondering what
Ackman, who has pressed for—and achieved—big changes at companies ranging from
Target to Wendy’s International, has in mind for Procter & Gamble.
“One of [Pershing Square’s] jobs is to become a mouthpiece
for investors who are frustrated. I think you have a lot of [P&G] investors
who are frustrated,” said Sanford Bernstein analyst Ali Dibadj in a Chicago
Tribune article. “The size of the investor frustration is proportional to the
size of the company.”
Ackman’s entrance comes on the heels of the company’s recent
warning that its sales would come in 1% to 2% below the year-earlier figure.
That’s down from its original forecast of a 1% to 2% increase. Current CEO Robert McDonald has been focusing
heavily on growing Procter & Gamble overseas, but it’s still dependent on
developed economies, such as the U.S. and Europe, for 60% of its sales. It’s
also being hurt by the Chinese slowdown, rising commodity prices and the
increasing U.S. dollar, which lowers the value of its overseas sales…..
Find out more at http://www.investingdaily.com/15456/bill-ackman-will-light-a-fire-under-procter-gamble
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