Activist follower, light on the news and stories today, but here’s what we mustered for June 23. You should know by now that the free newsletter is on a 24-hour delay. Subscribe to Activist Strategy to get it on publication day or request a two-week free trial here. As usual, check out the tweets on @activiststocks to stay in the know and get on the free daily newsletter list.
News-
- Metro Bancorp shareholders elected to put the activist investor Richard Lashley on its board
- The state-run pension is said to likely side with Samsung in its battle against Elliott Management. Korea’s National Pension Service is the largest Samsung C&T shareholder, owning 10.15%
- Starboard Value target Darden Restaurants will separate some of its restaurants into REIT [story to follow, previous notes here]
- Corvex Management’s portfolio got a nice boost yesterday from the surge in Williams Companies stock – the fund’s top holdings, with about a quarter of its portfolio invested there.
Stories-
- Michael Levin has a piece refuting the notion that buyback are bad. The idea is that there is a “use” for buybacks and that use has been to shovel the money into innovation via VC funds, etc. Of note, “In the past three years, share repurchases increased nicely, from a little under $400 billion in 2012 to over $550 billion in 2014. At the same time, funding of alternative investments exceeded share repurchases in each of those years. It grew from over $550 billion in 2012 to almost $600 billion in 2013, and jumped to over $650 billion in 2014” [link]
What we’ve been working on-
- Johnson Controls notes on being its own activist [full paywall]
- Activism in the REIT space [full paywall]
- A potential activist target in the airline parts space
- A company that’s its own activist but could be buyout bait [full paywall]
