Shareholders re-elect McDonald's directors, Icahn loses board battle BOSTON Reuters -- Shareholders have re-elected all of McDonald's Corp directors, ending a boardroom battle with billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who had tried to win two board seats and shine a spotlight on his campaign over animal welfare.
The company said that shareholders backed all 12 of McDonald's directors and that Icahn's two nominees received approximately 1% of the vote.
A Board of Directors with a breadth of experience in order to advise the Brand about the multitude of issues that can affect the business on a daily basis, board chairman Enrique Hernandez, Jr. said in a statement.
Icahn, who has made a career of pushing poor-performing companies to improve, owns roughly $50,000 worth of McDonald's stock, and nominated two candidates to push the company to make good on its decade-old promise of not buying pork by the end of this year from suppliers that house the animals in crates.
He said confining the pigs in crates during their pregnancy was inhumane and he wanted to shine a spotlight on the practice more broadly.
McDonald's said on Thursday that it is committed to remaining a leader in environmental, social and governance ESG initiatives, including animal welfare.
Icahn had appealed to large index funds that pay more attention to ESG issues to back him in his bid to win board seats, but preliminary tallies showed that BlackRock supported McDonald's.
A representative for Icahn didn't make a statement.