Activists: Misleading Ownership Stakes & Suspect Positioning Strategies

By GlobalSlant

Editor's note: This is from 2015 but is relevant today especially in light of recent news regarding Carl Icahn

“Activist Investors”, the relatively new classification for corporate agitators, want you to believe that their intellectual tactics/strategies improve both corporate governance and shareholder returns.

That may be true but they also seem to be involved in another, less savory, tactic…that is inflating their claims of company “ownership” with extremely large, and extra-ordinarily short dated/price sensitive, derivatives positions.

The derivatives positions are, typically, not converted to common shares until AFTER the MARKET MOVING, COMPULSORY SEC 13D Disclosure Filings…usually/already deep “in the money”.

Nothing like a “free...