Rentokil hands board seat to Nelson Peltz’s investment fund

Nelson Peltz’s hedge fund has secured a seat on the board of Rentokil Initial after buying a stake in the struggling pest control business.
Brian Baldwin, the head of research at Trian Fund Management, has been made a non-executive director after the fund built a stake of 2.26 per cent.
This year Rentokil’s share price jumped by 14 per cent on the day it emerged that Trian had purchased 57.1 million shares in the world’s biggest pest control company. Trian said that the stake would allow it to “discuss ideas and initiatives to improve shareholder value”. The stakebuilding came after Rentokil had warned last October of weaker demand in North America, prompting its shares to decline by almost a quarter in only a week.
Trian is an activist investor founded by Peltz, 82, who is known for his role in the break-up of Cadbury Schweppes and, more recently, for campaigns at Unilever and The Walt Disney Company. Peltz, who launched Trian in 2005 with Peter May and Ed Garden, also has become known in celebrity circles after his daughter Nicola Peltz, the actress, married Brooklyn Beckham, the eldest son of David and Victoria Beckham.
Rentokil was founded in 1925 and is based in Crawley, West Sussex. Its stock market value has almost tripled since Andy Ransom, 61, became its chief executive in 2013. The group has been offloading non-core businesses, such as catering and security, and is focusing on acquisitions to improve its pest control operations.
The FTSE 100 company has faced difficulties since it acquired Terminix, an American rival, for $6.7 billion in 2022. The deal secured a market share of 30 per cent in the United States, but it has been hampered by integration issues and analysts have questioned whether the business can effectively compete against Rollins, its largest rival.
Separately, it was reported in June that Philip Jansen, 57, a former BT boss, had been talking to private equity firms about a bid for Rentokil valuing the company at a possible £15 billion. He is said to be interested in using Rentokil to buy up smaller pest control companies in America.
Trian revealed its stake in Rentokil after losing a long-running battle to win a board seat at Disney and selling its $3.5 billion stake in the entertainments company for a profit of about $1 billion. Trian had warned that Disney had “woefully underperformed its peers and its potential” and had sought two seats on its board.
Baldwin, 41, will become a member of Rentokil’s nomination committee and its remuneration committee when he joins the board on October 1. He joined Trian’s investment team in 2007 and became a partner at the firm in 2013. He has been appointed to various roles at Trian’s investments during his career and at present is an independent non-executive director at Janus Henderson, the fund manager.
He said Trian felt Rentokil had “significant potential and runway for growth” in America and that he looked forward to helping to “identify options to help drive long-term value that will benefit all stakeholders”.
Richard Solomons, the chairman of Rentokil, said: “We are delighted to welcome Brian to the board of Rentokil Initial and we look forward to working with him to deliver long-term sustainable value for our shareholders and, in particular, executing our plans to integrate the Terminix business and to increase organic growth in our North America operations. We continue to work towards the substantial structural growth opportunities for our pest control business, enhanced by the benefits of the Terminix transaction.”
Shares in Rentokil rose by 13p, or 3.6 per cent, to 373½p in afternoon trading.