Bill Ackman must have had a really good feeling about his first meeting with Automatic Data Processing last week to plan a vacation starting Friday – and then he found out from a press release that the company was not only rejecting his request for a longer nomination window but publicly denigrating his investment record. Yesterday, Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management announced it was nominating him plus two other candidates to the ADP board – representing one-third, rather than a majority of the seats as the company said he initially wanted. The other nominees are former Polymer CEO Veronica Hagen and the Bechtel Group’s former chief financial officer, Paul Unruh. With the annual meeting expected to be held in November, three pretty intense months of jousting are on their way.
Short update
A subplot of our August cover story on activism in Israel was the prevalence of short sellers operating in the country’s stocks. Last week, two significant events highlighted the volatility that can afflict markets where volume is lighter – pharmaceuticals giant Teva fell 40% on weak earnings and fears about debt incurred in a recent acquisition, while Caestarstone Sdot-Yam gave up most of its year-to-date gains when it announced the departure of its chief financial officer, concurrent with an earnings miss. Two short sellers had targeted the latter and the country has seen more than 20 campaigns since 2013. For more, download our report now.
Stat of the week
So far this year (as of August 4, 2017), 15% of U.S.-headquartered companies publicly subjected to an activist demand operated in the technology sector, down from 18% in the same period last year.
View more trends and stats like these in our 2017 Annual R
Article by Activist Insight
