Think of Lou Kling and Brandon Van Dyke’s against-the-odds defense of E.I du Pont de Nemours & Co. in its proxy battle with Nelson Peltz’s Trian Fund Management L.P. as a kind of election campaign, albeit with nicer clothes and better hair.
The battle began when Trian, which held a 2.7 percent stake in DuPont, called for DuPont to break itself up to boost shareholder returns, but quickly escalated, with Trian eventually going after four DuPont board seats. By the time the hostilities began in earnest, Trian, which was undefeated in proxy fights with $10 billion-plus companies, had secured commitments from a pair of influential proxy advisory services, locking up large blocks of institutional investors.
