March 10, 2022
Transcript: “Activist Profiles & Playbooks”
We’ve posted the transcript from our recent webcast – “Activist Profiles & Playbooks.” Joele Frank’s Anne Chapman, Okapi Partners’ Bruce Goldfarb, Spotlight Advisors’ Damien Park and Abernathy MacGregor’s Dan Scorpio shared their insights on the lessons learned from 2021 activism and what we might see this year. Here’s an excerpt of some of Dan Scorpio’s comments on what companies can expect this year:
As we look back on last year, nearly half of all activist campaigns involved M&A as a core thesis. That could be pushing for a breakup, a spin-off, or opposing a previously announced or agreed upon transaction. We expect that this will likely continue until the M&A market turns. You’re starting to see activists more and more taking pages out of the private equity playbook. Some are even proposing to acquire the target companies outright, and if you think of how this happens, you’ll see a soft behind the scenes approach – an escalation to a proposal or a bear hug letter, and even some well-orchestrated leaks to media. This is something that we’re watching. It will be interesting to see if this picks up over this year as well.
– John Jenkins