McDonald’s Wins ISS Support in Board Fight With Carl Icahn

Activist investor Carl Icahn’s efforts to revamp the board of McDonald’s Corp. were dealt a blow Monday with a prominent shareholder advisory firm arguing the billionaire hadn’t made a sufficient argument for change.

Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. credited Icahn’s original push in 2012 for changing policies at McDonald’s and in the industry as a whole on the use of gestation crates for pregnant pigs, even though the fast-food chain fell short of its original goal of completely eliminating the use of the stalls in its supply chain.

The advisory firm argued that the proxy fight serves as a ...