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A bruising proxy battle, a complicated probable sale, and an industry-wide hunt for profits amid a much more demanding market will define the upcoming earnings season for major media and tech companies that run the video-entertainment business. A note this week from Macquarie Equity Research forecasted an “uninspiring” first quarter from the five big media companies as the legacy broadcast and cable networks continue to decline while direct-to-consumer streaming remains an expensive, usually loss-making venture. The news is far better for Netflix and other tech giants in the video business, in part because they don’t have to deal with those fading legacy divisions. First up to report is sector leader Netflix, with earnings due after market close on Thursday. Share prices have vaulted upward more than 28% since the start of the year, as it has generated billions in free cash flow and added millions of additional subscribers since an ugly earnings announcement almost exactly two years ago.
A previously anticipated platinum shortage will be worse than expected this year thanks to increased demand, particularly from the industrial sector, according to the World Platinum Investment Council. Global demand for platinum will see a 28% uptick this year compared to 2022, while supply will decrease 1% year-on-year, the organization said Monday.
Nineteen Republican state attorneys general sent a letter this month addressed to JPMorgan Chief Executive Jamie Dimon, accusing the nation’s largest bank of a “pattern of discrimination” and of denying customers banking services because of political or religious affiliations. In March, 14 Republican state treasurers wrote a similar letter to Mr. Dimon, making the same accusations.
China’s EV-related production is astounding. According to the Korean renewable energy consultancy SNE Research, China’s share of the global EV battery market has been rising relentlessly in recent years, reaching more than 60 per cent by 2022, up from less than 50 per cent the year before. It is likely that 2023 will see another leap. China’s CATL is the biggest EV battery maker, with more than a third of the global market.
Engaged, which has been in talks with Shake Shack’s management for over six months, sent a letter to the company’s board in March detailing its proposal for new directors and other changes to help boost the restaurant chain’s lagging stock price, but the two sides have thus far failed to reach an agreement, the people said. “We are executing our strategic plan and making substantial operational and financial progress,” a spokesman for Shake Shack said in a statement. “We are well positioned to continue enhancing value for shareholders.”
Landlord New York City REIT could be in line for a proxy board battle after an activist investor nominated a new board member and accused the real estate investment trust’s current leadership of allowing its “balance sheet to erode” and its CEO of conflict of interest.
With less than $40 million worth of ExxonMobil common stock in hand, but with $30 million to spend, Engine No. 1 executed a proxy fight that succeeded in getting three of its four nominated directors elected to the board of ExxonMobil. This victory was viewed as a success by environmentalists and Environmental, Social and Governance (“ESG”) investors. To defend itself in the proxy fight, ExxonMobil was estimated to have spent $35 million. However, besides the money, it not hard to believe that thousands of hours of ExxonMobil management time (board members, executive management, and other managers down the line) were also spent on the effort. Unfortunately, even after all these resources expended, this Article finds that nothing was really accomplished.
The exit stage of a startup’s growth is typically when the startup wants to attract additional investment for growth or wants to sell completely and no longer manage the business. The most common routes to exit are going public with an IPO, SPAC or selling to another, larger company. The exit process is pretty mysterious and the reasoning behind different decisions is often kept behind closed doors — so we’re here to lift the veil.
#1. Why exit in the first place?
#2. How do you choose an exit strategy?
#3. To SPAC or not to SPAC?
China’s big three telecoms carriers lost their appeals against being kicked off the New York Stock Exchange, and will be delisted to comply with an investment ban
An investor group on Thursday called on Exxon Mobil’s board to recruit directors and senior executives with energy and clean fuels experience, echoing calls at the center of an ongoing proxy fight.
During the corporate takeover battles of the 1980s, the term “white squire” designated a significant bloc shareholder that management enlisted to deter or defeat unwanted bids for company control. A version of this classic tactic is playing out amid today’s proxy contests, where management cultivates its quality shareholders — “QSs,” those that are long-term and focused — to ward off or beat back overzealous shareholder activists.
In the battle to ward off a hostile takeover from long-term rival Veolia, Suez is raising the stakes. The French waste and water management company announced that its strategy to improve the firm’s financial performance was paying off sooner than expected. As a consequence, Suez shareholders can look forward to €1.2 billion in exceptional dividends by early 2021.
During the course of the most recent bull market, merger and acquisition (M&A) activity generally remained robust. We increasingly saw competitive auctions for desirable companies, some of which also had the ability to pursue an initial public offering instead of a sale. In the years since the 2008 financial crisis, many acquisitive companies have become accustomed to pursuing target companies with solid balance sheets and bright prospects. With the COVID-19 crisis, we suddenly find ourselves, once again, in an extremely challenging economic environment, one that many companies are unprepared to face. Many will not survive the economic fallout from the pandemic. Many others will persevere, some perhaps even thrive. They will have the opportunity to strengthen and expand their own footprints by salvaging promising companies that now find themselves in distress.
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La loyauté des militants caquistes envers leur chef atteint un sommet inégalé, malgré l’abandon récent de la promesse électorale du troisième lien autoroutier. Le premier ministre François Legault a obtenu l’appui de 98,61 % des membres de son parti réunis en congrès à Sherbrooke, dimanche, un résultat supérieur à celui qu’il avait obtenu il y a près de 10 ans.
Schneider Electric, one of the world’s largest makers of electrical and automation products, is shifting some manufacturing closer to the U.S. from factories in Asia and Europe as it pushes ahead with a regional manufacturing strategy. Schneider’s revenue in North America grew about 25% in the first quarter year-over-year to roughly $3.13 billion, accounting for about a third of its total revenue.
L’accord de 14 milliards qui verra Volkswagen, le plus grand manufacturier automobile au monde, installer une usine au Canada pour la première fois de l’Histoire est le fruit d’une longue année de négociations des deux côtés de l’Atlantique.
Investors at three major Canadian energy companies – Imperial Oil Ltd. have rejected shareholder proposals on climate issues this spring, but the activists who pushed them are heartened by the support they did receive.
Three of the largest U.S. oil companies said they have joined a United Nations-backed group working to curb greenhouse-gas emissions. An unlikely investor played a role in brokering the move: Engine No. 1, the investment firm that defeated Exxon Mobil Corp. in a historic proxy battle last year. [...] Christopher James, founder of Engine No. 1, the investment firm that elected three directors to Exxon’s board last year after arguing the oil giant was a climate laggard, helped convince the companies to join the group, company executives and other people involved in the process said. [...] Mr. James, who is also executive chairman of Engine No. 1, said he now wants to work with companies, rather than take an activist role. “It’s really important for us to move on from the moniker of activist,” Mr. James said. A passive exchange-traded fund managed by Engine No. 1 has relatively small investments in each of the three companies. Its active funds don’t.
Proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services on Monday backed cloud storage vendor Box Inc in its fight with activist investor Starboard Value by recommending that shareholders vote for the company's directors instead of the hedge fund's nominees.
The high-profile ExxonMobil shareholder vote in May sent shock waves through many of corporate America’s boardrooms. While there were various factors at play in the ExxonMobil scenario, the bottom line is this: A newly launched and virtually unknown hedge fund with a tiny stake in a massive global enterprise managed to leverage environmental and governance issues into winning three board seats at the annual meeting, displacing three incumbent directors, and is now in a position to influence the strategic direction of the company. Engine No. 1 LLC accomplished the unlikely feat of electing three nominees to ExxonMobil’s board by garnering broad support from an array of sources, notably profit-oriented activists and major institutional investors. Overall, the 2021 proxy season saw a significant increase in shareholder support for EESG-related (i.e., relating to environmental, employee, social, and governance issues) proposals compared to 2020 and 2019. The ExxonMobil proxy contest is an example of the risks and dynamics at play in the current environment.
Exxon Mobil Corp.’s Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods says the company is “deeply apologetic” over comments caught on camera in a secret filming by Greenpeace that show one of the oil giant’s lobbyists saying a carbon tax the company has promoted for years is unlikely to happen.
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC, or Commission) Division of Examinations (Division) recently issued a Risk Alert highlighting staff observations from examinations of investment advisers, registered investment companies and private funds (firms) engaged in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing.
Hedge funds may pocket side payments when providing “bodyguard” services to companies whose strategies and management are under siege in the market. But becoming so-called validation capital could come with “a dark side,” according to new research.
Exxon Mobil Corp. is preparing to make changes to its board and adopt further measures to reduce its carbon footprint as the beleaguered energy giant faces pressure from a pair of activist investors.
Jim Osler and his team of dealmakers at boutique investment firm Origin Merchant Partners were on the phone every day in early March trying to lock down the final details of Centric Health Corp.’s purchase of competitor Remedy Holdings Inc., a transaction that would create a major player in specialty pharmacy services for senior care across the country. The global coronavirus pandemic was bearing down, less than two weeks from shuttering virtually all non-essential businesses and, it turned out, pushing the pause button on merger and acquisition activity. But it hadn’t yet stopped people from making plans to travel in order to conduct due diligence and sign documents to seal deals. [...] The veteran dealmaker, who cut his teeth at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and Genuity Capital Markets, a one-time upstart filled with expats from CIBC that was later purchased by Canaccord, is still working on potential deals in the telecommunications, education, health-care and agri-food sectors, a fact punctuated by a ringing doorbell as couriered packages continued to arrive during an interview.
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