Dive Brief:
- Activist investor Nelson Peltz has renewed his call for PepsiCo to spin off its snack business into a separate company.
- The move is a slap in the face to PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi, who last week told investors that she would not split up the company but would instead focus on cost-cutting.
- Peltz laid out his argument for a breakup in a 37-page letter that he is sending to other shareholders.
Dive Insight:
Right about now, we'd guess that the folks at Mondelez International are feeling a little silly. Just days ago, they invited Peltz to join their board. That move was widely assumed to be an attempt to appease Peltz and get him to stop all his agitating. Peltz has long annoyed Mondelez by calling on it to buy Pepsi's Frito Lay snack business.
So it seems to us that two of the biggest companies on earth — PepsiCo and Mondelez — have now bent over backward to keep Peltz quiet, and it hasn't worked for either of them. There's a lesson there, and it goes something like this: If someone stands outside your house and screams for days on end, the solution is not to try to engage him in conversation.