P&G Says Still Reviewing Razor-Thin Proxy Vote

Procter & Gamble Co. said Wednesday it is continuing to review the official tally of the hotly contested proxy contest with activist Nelson Peltz but hasn't decided whether to formally challenge the results, which showed the company lost by a razor-thin margin.

A P&G spokesman said the consumer products giant is reviewing data from both electronically cast votes and paper proxy cards and, based on the findings, will decide whether to challenge the results compiled by IVS Associates Inc., an independent proxy counting firm.

In a challenge, P&G and Trian would argue the validity of questionable votes and IVS would make a determination.

"As we said before, the IVS tabulation results are preliminary and are going through the customary review to ensure a final and accurate count, " the P&G spokesman said. "P&G will disclose the results after receiving the Independent Inspector of Elections' final certified report, which we are pushing to get as quickly as possible."

Mr. Peltz's Trian Fund Management earlier Wednesday said it believed P&G had decided to review and challenge the results, saying it was disappointed that the company continued to "waste further time and shareholder money contesting the official tabulation of the independent inspector."

After the most expensive proxy fight in history and five weeks of counting, IVS's tally of the roughly 2 billion votes that were cast for the October meeting found Mr. Peltz had 42,780 more votes than a P&G director he ran against. That is a margin of 0.0016% of the shares outstanding.

Write to Sharon Terlep at sharon.terlep@wsj.com and David Benoit at david.benoit@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 22, 2017 10:10 ET (15:10 GMT)