By Tom Hals
WILMINGTON, Del. (Reuters) - DuPont
Trian, which had been seeking four seats on the board, also said its nominees were apparently not elected. DuPont said it expected an independent inspector to certify the preliminary voting results shortly.
DuPont shares fell nearly 6 percent to $70.50 in early trading.
The vote ends a high-stakes corporate drama that revved up in January when Trian announced its dissident board slate for the 213-year-old chemical company.
Trian, which with a 2.7 percent stake is DuPont's fifth-largest shareholder, has criticized the company's performance and said it should split its businesses to unlock greater value for investors.
DuPont, a Dow Jones industrials <.DJI> component with a market value of $68 billion as of Tuesday, has said Trian would try to establish a "shadow management" team that would undermine the company's strategic transformation.
"We look forward to continuing to execute our strategic plan to make DuPont a higher-growth, higher-value company," DuPont Chief Executive Officer Ellen Kullman said in a statement announcing the results.
Addressing the shareholder meeting in DuPont's hometown of Wilmington, Peltz pointed to changes at DuPont such as cost cuts. "We don't believe these things would have occurred without our involvement," he said.
(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington and Swetha Gopinath in Bengaluru; Writing by Lewis Krauskopf in New York; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)