Mondelez International, the snack company that Kraft Foods spun off in 2012, announced on Tuesday that it had added the activist investor Nelson Peltz to its board, as Mr. Peltz seemed to end his push for a merger between Mondelez and PepsiCo.
“We respect his more than 40 years of business and investment experience as well as his expertise helping consumer products companies leverage their brands and improve operating and financial performance,†said Irene Rosenfeld, the chairman and chief executive of Mondelez, in a statement on the company’s website. “We welcome his input as we deliver superior shareholder returns.â€
Mr. Peltz will be the 12th member of Mondelez’s board and will be included in the company’s nominees for election at its annual shareholder meeting later this year. Mondelez reported revenue of $35 billion in 2012.
Mr. Peltz, the chief executive and founding partner of the multi-billion-dollar investment firm Trian Fund Management, has been agitating for change at the Deerfield, Illinois-based Mondelez for months.
Trian had pushed for a merger between PepsiCo and Mondelez, which owns Cadbury chocolate and other brands, in a white paper the company issued last July. In it, Mr. Peltz criticized Pepsi’s “slow-growth†beverage business (the Americas beverage unit declined 4.5 percent in 2012) and urged the company to consider a merger with Mondelez. After a merger, Trian said it wanted Pepsi to spin off its snack operations into a new entity that would house the Frito-Lay, Cadbury, Oreo and Nabisco brands under one roof.
Trian owns a stake in both PepsiCo and Mondelez, which fueled merger speculation at the time. The white paper went on to suggest that if Pepsi was not interested in a merger with Mondelez that it consider separating its snack and beverage units.
“Given that Pepsi’s not interested in Plan A, we are encouraging them to pursue Plan B,†a spokesman for Trian said on Tuesday.
A spokesperson for Mondelez or PepsiCo could not be immediately reached.
