Yvan Allaire: Shareholder Activism and Long-Term Value

In case you missed it last weekend, Donna Dabney, Executive Director of the Governance Center at The Conference Board posted this November 14th presentation by  Dr. Yvan Allaire presented at the Annual Meeting of The Conference Board Governance Center. His talk was titled Do activist interventions create long term shareholder value?

Allaire reviews a lot of studies and basically disputes the contention that activist interventions lead to long-term shareholder value. While I find his arguments compelling, what we really need in research going forward is much more nuanced than what his overview provides. Yes, I yield to the point that most shareholder activism doesn’t move in the direction I would like. For example, transferring wealth from employees and debt holders to shareholders only aggravates wealth disparity. Agreed – reducing cash, investment and R&D seem more likely to the hurt long-run prospects of a company.  Read more