Shareholder Activism

Shareholder activism can be defined as the use of shareholder prerogatives, including but not limited to the filing of shareholder resolutions, to attempt to effect some policy change by a corporation and its managers. Shareholder activism encompasses a variety of techniques that holders of common stock in a public corporation use to affect the behavior of that corporation's managers. Shareholder activism can include the voting of shares for or against particular policy initiatives submitted by managers or other shareholders. The more typical use of the term refers to using pressure techniques—like the filing of shareholder resolutions—that seek to influence corporate and managerial behavior. In contrast to the screening out of bad corporate actors envisioned in “socially responsible” or “ethical” investing, shareholder activism relies instead on ...