CalSTRS has voted its 3.6 million shares in E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. in support of alternatives money manager Trian Fund Management's four board candidates, said Michael Sicilia, CalSTRS spokesman, in an e-mail.
The $191.2 billion California State Teachers' Retirement System, West Sacramento, said in a news release that “given DuPont's poor operating performance over the past several years, including earnings in 2015 projected to be below 2011 levels for the fourth year in a row, CalSTRS has concluded that it is time to rejuvenate the board of directors.”
Trian is running four nominees for DuPont's 12-director board at the company's annual meeting on Wednesday. CalSTRS also invested $300 million in Trian's activist hedge fund in April 2011.
“We believe DuPont has mischaracterized Trian's plan as 'break up and lever up' despite Trian's stated goal of keeping the company's credit rating investment grade,” Anne Sheehan, CalSTRS' director of corporate governance, said in the news release. “Trian is committed to an open-minded approach to corporate structure and to a path toward eliminating excess corporate costs. We therefore support Trian by voting the gold proxy card for all four of Trian's nominees.”
Officials at he $305.3 billion California Public Employees' Retirement System, Sacramento, announced on Friday that it voted its 6.15 million shares in favor of DuPont's nominees, saying Trian's nominees don't add “significant value.”
