Bill Ackman’s Battle With ADP Is a Litmus Test for Activist Investing<br />“This is a big, lumbering bureaucracy,” Mr. Ackman said of ADP, laying out his case that the company was being overtaken by smaller, nimbler rivals.<br />“Then there was a change in leadership, and now they’re making a lot of progress and a lot of money.”<br />Mr. Ackman said that he had initially asked the company to work with him and avoid a public fight, but<br />that Mr. Rodriguez and the board had become confrontational.<br />“They’re being left behind.”<br />The showdown will come to a head on Tuesday, when shareholders will vote whether to elect three<br />new directors, including Mr. Ackman, to the ADP board, replacing existing directors.<br />As a result, Mr. Ackman started a campaign to elect himself<br />and two other directors — Veronica M. Hagen, the former chief executive of Polymer Group, and V. Paul Unruh, a director at Symantec and a former Bechtel executive — to the ADP board<br />Over the last three months, ADP and Mr. Ackman have traded verbal assaults, taken out full-page ads in major newspapers including ,<br />and used websites, webcasts and presentations to make their case to investors.
