Ingersoll CEO Met With Peltz's Trian Fund
NEW YORK, May 23 -- Ingersoll Rand Plc's CEO said he met with executives of Nelson Peltz's Trian Fund, which this month revealed it had taken a 7 percent stake in the air conditioning and security systems maker.
The meeting was "constructive," CEO Mike Lamach told an analyst conference on Wednesday. Peltz's hedge fund has said Trian would push for changes at Ingersoll, including looking at strategic alternatives.
"I've had conversations, I've had one meeting with Trian," Lamach said at the Electrical Products Group conference in Longboat Key, Florida.
"I consider them to be constructive; I think Trian would consider it constructive as well. (They are a) very serious investor whom we respect tremendously, we're evaluating their ideas. It would be too early to comment on specifics of any proposals that they'd have."
Trian has said Ingersoll should raise its operating margins closer to the level of peers and consider using debt to fund a more aggressive stock buyback, according to the regulatory filing. Trian also said it was seeking more independent directors on Ingersoll's board and that executive pay needed to better reflect performance.
Ingersoll's CEO said he has conducted three reviews of the portfolio in the three years since he became CEO, resulting in four divestitures.
Lamach said they would take Trian's ideas and analyze them no differently than they would than other investors.
"We'll have the same review process that we conduct annually, regardless of Trian's involvement," he said.
Lamach also said Ingersoll was seeing "solid" orders and it could spend between $300 million and $800 million on share buybacks in the second half of the year, depending on whether the company does an acquisition in that period.
(Reporting By Nick Zieminski in New York; editing by John Wallace and Maureen Bavdek)
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