DealLawyers.com Blog

We’ve posted the transcript for our latest “Activist Profiles & Playbooks” webcast.  Our panelists — Juan Bonifacino of Spotlight Advisors, Anne Chapman of Joele Frank, Sydney Isaacs of H/Advisors Abernathy and Geoffrey Weinberg of Morrow Sodali — discussed lessons from 2023, the evolution of activist strategies, UPC, what to expect from activists in 2024 and how to prepare.

Here’s a snippet of Juan’s comments on the flip side of UPC for activists:

It may be harder for dissidents to get larger slates elected because each candidate needs to be differentiated. Before, an activist could put up a slate of four or five people and because someone’s voting on your card, that ends up depriving the management slate from getting votes. Now people are saying, “Why did you nominate three instead of two? What does this third person add?”

In terms of whether that’s a higher bar, it requires a more nuanced argument that the dissident needs to make to say, “This solution to this problem I’ve identified needs these three people and this is why” in a way that maybe wasn’t as central historically. It was getting there, if you look over the last 10 years, but again, universal proxy accelerates that trend.

Members of this site can access the transcript of this program. If you are not a member of DealLawyers.com, email sales@ccrcorp.com to sign up today and get access to the full transcript – or sign up online.

– John Jenkins