IR Magazine has released a new report examining attitudes and practices toward shareholder activist campaigns. The report looks at this issue from three key viewpoints: IROs, buy-side investors and sell-side analysts. Findings are based on responses from the IR Magazine Global IR Survey 2019 and the IR Magazine Global Investor Survey 2019, both conducted in the latter half of last year.
This report examines how companies respond to activist campaigns and what IROs see as the underlying reasons for them. It further looks at how buy-side investors engage with shareholder activism and what importance sell-side analysts attach to activist campaigns.
The report contains verbatim comments expressing the individual opinions of shareholder activism by IROs, investors and analysts.
Key findings
- Less than a quarter of companies have been targeted by an activist investor.
- Just under two thirds of IROs view shareholder activism as being more concerned with short-term share price increases than long-term value creation.
- A majority of IROs view shareholder activism as little or no threat to their company.
- More than two in 10 investors have been involved in an activist campaign in the past three years.
- Almost six in 10 investors view an activist’s quality of investment thesis as very or extremely important when deciding to back a campaign.
- More than six in 10 investors are open to talking to an activist investor.
- A minority of sell-side analysts say activist campaigns influence their buy/sell rating of a company.
- More than eight in 10 analysts consider board-related activism as important to their view of a company.
- Nearly two thirds of analysts think activists use social media more effectively than companies do.
Click here to download the report.
