The fox may be in the hen-house.
It appears that whenever an activist investor, yesterday’s Wall Street Gunslingers, purchases a significant stake in a company or assumes a seat on the board, restructuring and mass layoffs are sure to follow. According to the Wall Street Journal, Nelson Peltz may have won his proxy battle for a seat on the giant consumer goods company Procter & Gamble by the thinnest of vote count margins. Reportedly 43,000 votes out of 2 BILLION votes — a 0.002% margin. Allegedly the proxy battle cost Peltz’s Trian Partners and P&G approximately $100 MILLION – quite a few employees to make up the loss.
A previous story on P&G was not encouraging
The hedge fund boss seeking a seat on Procter & Gamble's board of directors has pushed companies to remove more than 100,000 jobs through layoffs or business unit sales, a review by The Cincinnati Enquirer shows. Peltz has decried P&G's "suffocating bureaucracy" and advocates a "flat organization" but has side-stepped any specifics on potential job cuts. He says he wants to thin P&G's corporate jobs from 10,000 to 1,000 but move an unspecified amount back into business units such as oral care or baby care. Since 2012, P&G has already shed 34,000 jobs through buyouts and business unit sales, a 26% reduction in headcount. <10/4/2017 USA Today>
The handwriting is on the wall, it is up to the P&G employees to react accordingly.
Change is coming. There will always be a tomorrow, no matter how much you may try to ignore it. There are no guarantees in life or promises for a bright future. We see good people being laid off through no fault of their own. Just because something bad hasn't happened yet, doesn't mean it won't. It can happen to anyone, anytime, anywhere. No one is guaranteed to wake up tomorrow and still have a job by evening. Are you now wondering, Am I Next?