“This proxy season is shaping up to be the busiest on record,” said Shaun Mathew, a partner at law firm Kirkland & Ellis LLP who advises companies on how to prepare for and respond to activists.“Companies are concerned it will draw in first-time activists who think they can take advantage of the new system to…
Category: activism
Disney Board Adds Tech Exec Carolyn Everson in Agreement With Investor Dan Loeb
Disney added technology executive Carolyn Everson to its board of directors on Friday as part of an support agreement with activist investor and hedge fund investor Daniel Loeb and his company Third Point LLC after “a constructive dialogue.”Loeb, who acquired a 0.4% stake in Disney in August, worth at the time nearly $1 billion, had…
FTI Consulting: Still Spinning
We are not surprised to see FTI Consulting is still reliably unreliable. This is the firm that famously created fake dark money-funded front groups, fake news sites, and fake social media profiles and has not answered our inquiries about their reported changes. Managing Director Kurt Moeller writes a piece titled “5 Factors Impacting Activists’ Declining…
Dutch investor group targets oil, gas execs’ pay plans if climate goals fall short | Reuters
A group of Dutch investors managing assets worth nearly 1.5 trillion euros threatened on Friday to oppose oil and gas sector executives’ pay plans if their companies failed to set climate change goals in line with the Paris Agreement on global warming. The institutional investors, including the asset management arms of insurers Aegon(AEGN.AS) and NN…
Quality Shareholder Initiative’s Professor Lawrence Cunningham on New SEC Restrictions on Shareholders
Prof. Lawrence Cunningham, Director of the Quality Shareholders Initiative writes about his concern that the SEC’s new disclosure requirements for activist shareholders will make constructive engagement and oversight more difficult. He does concede, though, that portions of the proposal actually make activist engagement easier. The 2022 proxy season is primed for historic levels of shareholder activism,…
Agenda – Icahn Mulling Proxy Fight at McDonald’s Over … Pigs
The longest-running and highest-profile activist of them all may be mounting a new proxy contest, the first over what might be considered an ESG issue. [Carl Icahn appears to be preparing what could be his first foray into socially conscious investing with inspiration from an unlikely source: pigs. According to the Journal, Icahn is reportedly…
Why Finance Firms Should Pay Attention to Activist Investing
Activist investing was never really an activity for ‘the people’ historically. Perhaps because ‘the people’ hadn’t yet considered how being a shareholder could be used as a form of activism. Now, we find ourselves amid a retail investor boom, and it shows no signs of slowing down. They even have a name tag for this…
Do Hedge Funds Create Value? 3 Lessons From Danone And Unilever
Hedge funds do not have to disclose to the SEC any intentions to exert control of a company if they own less than 5% of a company. These small stakes can still have huge impact, as we have seen at corporate giants like Exxon and Nestle. Even small hedge funds can have significant influence if…
Huge investor coalition urges governments to accelerate climate action | Corporate Secretary
A huge investor coalition has called on national governments to accelerate policy changes that will support investment in climate change solutions. A group of 587 investment firms with a collective $46 trillion in assets under management yesterday issued a statement urging governments to take a range of actions, from strengthening emissions targets to mandating climate…
Activision Blizzard, sued for its workplace culture, is facing investor pressure from the Strategic Organizing Center.
The Strategic Organizing Center (formerly Change to Win) is a democratic coalition of four labor unions: Service Employees International Union (SEIU), International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), Communications Workers of America (CWA) and United Farmworkers of America (UFW). Together, SOC-affiliated unions represent more than 4 million workers. In an interview with Slate, SOC’s research director, Richard Clayton,…
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