Contenu pour le mot clé: Columbia Law School Blog

7 septembre 2017

« Dow Jones Erred By Going Nuclear on Dual-Class Shares »

« In July 2017, Dow Jones, goaded by the reaction to Snapchat having gone public with a class of shares without voting rights, announced that, after extensive consultation, it had decided to henceforth eliminate companies with dual-class shares from its indices, in particular the S&P 500 Index. Over the last 10 years, putting money in […]

13 septembre 2016

« Making Say-on-Pay Vote Binding: A Good Idea? »

« The practice of a non-binding say-on-pay vote by shareholders spread quickly and broadly. It seemed that, finally, shareholders would be given the opportunity to express their dissatisfaction with outrageous or ill-conceived compensation packages. The practice, at first, was voluntary with companies agreeing to submit their compensation policies to a vote. Then, as the number […]

26 janvier 2016

« Hedge Fund Activism: A Guide for the Perplexed »

« The message of the Dow/DuPont merger and split up is simple: No firm is today “too big to target.” Activists can see the transaction as evidence that, even in the rare case where they lose a proxy fight (as they did at DuPont last year in a squeaker), the handwriting is still on the […]

30 novembre 2015

« Who Should Pick Board Members? »

« There is a frenzied rush for shareholders to get a new ‘right”, the right to put up their own nominees for board membership. Boards of directors, so goes a dominant opinion, are not to be fully trusted to pick the right kind of people as directors or to shift the membership swiftly as circumstances […]

14 octobre 2015

« The Game of « Activist » Hedge Funds: Cui Bono ? »

« Over the last few years, hedge fund activism has received a great deal of coverage in financial media (and in the mainstream press), has triggered heated debates and been the focus of much academic research. Saviour of capitalism for some, for others, activist hedge funds are but mongers of short-term tactics which eventually damage business […]

1 juin 2015

« The Lessons of DuPont: Corporate Governance For Dummies »

« 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 […]

20 avril 2015

« The DuPont Proxy Battle: New Myths, Old Realities—and Even Newer Data About Hedge Fund Activism »

« 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, […]