Like a group called ISS, Glass Lewis & Company advises shareholders on big decisions they’re being asked to vote on at company meetings. And like ISS, Glass Lewis has come down in support of a push by two major shareholders to split Timken’s bearings and steel operations into separate companies.

Timken started making specialty steel in large part to supply its bearings operations. But it’s since branched into oil and gas, off-road equipment and other businesses. Stanley Elliot is an analyst with the Stifel financial advisory firm who has covered  Timken for about a year. He says the California teachers’ pension fund and a group called Relational Investors believe the stock market undervalues Timken as a single entity.

“The investors’ position is that these two businesses are no longer synergistic, and when you look at how the stock market valued Timken, it is a considerable discount compared to other industrial peers.”

Shareholders will  vote on whether to push the split at Timken’s May 7 meeting. Both Timken management and its union, the United Steelworkers, oppose the split, saying the company has performed well for more than a century .