Activist hedge funds can count on a number of supporters in academia and in the media rising up in defense of their actions. No doubt activist hedge funds have found their most persistent academic supporters in Professor Lucian Bebchuk of the Harvard Law School and his co-authors. In several papers, but most particularly in the […]

The decades-long conflict that is currently raging over short-termism and activist hedge funds strikes me as analogous to the Thirty Years’ War of the 17th Century, albeit fought with statistics (“empirical evidence”), op-eds and journal articles rather than cannon, pike and sword. I decided, after some thirty-six years in the front line of the army […]

The decades-long conflict that is currently raging over short-termism and activist hedge funds strikes me as analogous to the Thirty Years’ War of the 17th Century, albeit fought with statistics (“empirical evidence”), op-eds and journal articles rather than cannon, pike and sword. I decided, after some thirty-six years in the front line of the army […]

This paper aims to describe the contemporary tactics and objectives of activist Hedge Funds as well as the actions taken by targeted companies as a result of their intervention. While doing so, we explored the consequences of activism over time when compared to a random sample of firms with similar characteristics at the time of […]

Today, I’d like to pull together some themes that I have been thinking, speaking, and writing about during my tenure and address them more holistically. Specifically, I’d like to share with you some thoughts about shareholder activism, short-termism, and the SEC. I. What is activism? Like many others, I view activism broadly: it is simply […]

At 8:38 a.m. on June 11, the activist investment firm Elliott Management—run by billionaire Paul Singer—disclosed that it controlled a 7.1% interest in software vendor Citrix Systems, and wanted to meet with management to discuss its proposal to overhaul the company. More than seven hours passed before Fort Lauderdale-based Citrix CTXS, +0.86% produced a noncommittal, […]

“Among practitioners, it is a customary cliché to say that all proxy contests—just like all trials—are unique and idiosyncratic. There is some truth to that easy generalization, but it also misses the forest for the trees. Some obvious truths stand out in the recent battle between Trian Fund Management and DuPont that will apply to […]

The Executive Chair of the Institute, Dr. Yvan Allaire,  is mentionned in the Wall Street Journal, the MorningstarAdvisor and the Dow Jones Newswires! In an article about the activist hedge funds. “U.S. businesses, feeling heat from activist investors, are slashing long-term spending and returning billions of dollars to shareholders, a fundamental shift in the way […]

“U.S. businesses, feeling heat from activist investors, are slashing long-term spending and returning billions of dollars to shareholders, a fundamental shift in the way they are deploying capital. Data show a broad array of companies have been plowing more cash into dividends and stock buybacks, while spending less on investments such as new factories and […]

U.S. businesses, feeling heat from activist investors, are slashing long-term spending and returning billions of dollars to shareholders, a fundamental shift in the way they are deploying capital. Data show a broad array of companies have been plowing more cash into dividends and stock buybacks, while spending less on investments such as new factories and […]

“Martin Lipton is a founding partner of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, and this post is based on a Wachtell Lipton memorandum. The post puts forward criticism of an empirical study by Lucian Bebchuk, Alon Brav, and Wei Jiang on the long-term effects of hedge fund activism; this study is available here, and its results […]

A watershed moment is coming for shareholder activism and corporate governance generally, as the proxy contest brought by Trian Management Fund, seeking effectively to break up DuPont, enters its final stages (with the vote being less than a month away). Technically, the contest is to elect four Trian Fund nominees to the DuPont board, but, […]

“Despite the continued support of attacks by activist hedge funds by the Chair of the SEC, and many “Chicago school” academics who continue to rely on discredited statistics, there is growing recognition by institutional investors and prominent “new school” economists of the threat to corporations and their shareholders and to the economy of these attacks […]

” But it’s no joke to Yvan Allaire, Executive Chair at the Institute of Governance, who believes The Economist is running infomercials for activist hedge funds: On a topic requiring sober, balanced coverage, The Economist cuts logical corners, tramples contrary evidence, ignores a vast store of scholarship, and conjures up an empirical “study” to produce […]

With its knack for tackling big subjects in a one-sided manner, The Economist in its February 7th issue imagines a dystopian world where corporate managers and boards of directors are generally incompetent, most investors are lazy; but “activists are a force for good”, “capitalism’s unlikely heroes” and “the saviours of public companies”! Even for a […]

“Yet companies, boards, and other investors should keep in mind that shareholder activism is often merely a tactic in a self-interested investment strategy. Shareholder activists such as hedge funds typically are pursuing short-term financial gain at the expense of long-term shareholders and stakeholders. These funds welcome the support of academics and theorists who argue that […]