Activist Investing

Activist investing is an investment approach whereby an investor seeks to influence the strategy of a company. Strategy may be very broadly defined to include acquisitions, divestitures, capital structure, dividend policy and board composition, inter alia.

We see two broad aspects of this strategy that may exist separately or together. First, activist investing may seek to remedy conflicts of interest in corporate governance. Secondly, it may be seen as a derivative strategy of value investing that attempts not only to identify undervalued companies, but also to engage those companies to pursue actions that will realize shareholder value.

We believe activist strategies should be considered as a part of investors’ equity portfolios.

Sponsored Content

Leave a Comment

GIC, Temasek eye trillions of growth in climate adaptation market

GIC, Temasek eye trillions of growth in climate adaptation market

Singapore’s two largest asset owners, GIC and Temasek, see attractive opportunities in climate adaptation solutions – a relatively underfunded area compared to decarbonisation. The former has already made selective adaptation investments and said the opportunity set across public and private debt and equity could increase to $9 trillion by 2050.

Sort content by

Investing in inflation protection

This paper by Anand Iyer and Jennifer Bender from MSCI, acknowledges that the current tug-of-war between inflation and deflation has created considerable confusion for investors, and explores these characteristics of inflation-protected bonds to see if, and to what extent, they have contributed to portfolio diversification and provided investors with protection from inflation and deflation.mrec4inarticleinline Sponsored

Hybrid pension plans: history, economics, features

As the trend away from defined-benefit pension funds continues around the globe, this paper by Towers Watson examines the plan design of hybrid funds looking at the risks, funding volatility, cost control and lifetime income.mrec4inarticleinline Sponsored Content scnative1 scnative2 scnative3

The impact of scale, complexity, and service on admin costs

Using data on 90 pension funds from 2004-2008 this paper examines the impact of scale, the complexity of pension plans, and service quality on the adminstrative costs of pension funds, and compares those costs across Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, and the US. It finds that, except for Canada, large unused economies-of-scale exist.mrec4inarticleinline Sponsored Content scnative1

Portfolio choice with illiquid assets

New research by Columbia University’s Andrew Ang, Dimitris Papanikolaou from Northwestern University, and Mark Westerfield from the University of Southern California, shows that illiquidity, modelled as the ability to trade only at randomly occurring discrete points in time, has large effects on policies and optimal asset allocation. mrec4inarticleinline Sponsored Content scnative1 scnative2 scnative3

Sustainable investing: positioning for long-term success

A new VisionFocus report by State Street leverages new research by State Street Global Advisors to examine the growing impact of environmental, social and governance concerns on the investment decisions of institutional investors.mrec4inarticleinline Sponsored Content scnative1 scnative2 scnative3

Managing investment risk

This survey-based study describes how large global funds manage investment risk from strategy to implementation. mrec4inarticleinline Sponsored Content scnative1 scnative2 scnative3

Previous