New York Times Blogs – Thanks mainly to a rise in the number of hedge funds players in the field, activist investors in the United States increasingly bared their teeth last year.
The number of activist campaigns rose 17 percent this year, to 501 rumbles between activists and company management from 429 the previous year, according to data from a research firm, FactSet SharkWatch.
Those campaigns were either pushing for control at companies, or asking firms to raise shareholder value by putting themselves or their subsidiaries up for sale or by returning cash to shareholders.
Furthermore, more of these activists were willing to take it to the mat, the research found, as the number of investors willing to wage formal proxy fights was the highest since FactSet began tracking proxy fights in 2001.
While the big names in activist investing, such as Carl C. Icahn and Nelson Peltz, remained active, a rise in activist hedge funds was apparently the driving factor in the increase in the number of squabbles.
