【每天一篇经济学人】Investor activism 投资者激进主义（2023

文章来源：《经济学人》May 27th 2023 期 Leaders 栏目 Investor activism

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Little scares the C-suite like shareholder activism. Bosses stay awake worrying about a call, a letter or a 100-page presentation in which a hedge fund outlines the depths of their ineptitude. At the start of the year executives were especially on edge. During this year’s annual “proxy season”—a succession of shareholder meetings—they have mostly avoided votes on dissident nominees to their boards. Nevertheless in recent months some of the world’s largest firms—including Alphabet, Bayer, Disney and Salesforce—have had to tussle with activists, who are increasingly focused on the biggest companies. On May 25th, as we published this article, the battle between Carl Icahn, a prominent activist, and Illumina, a genomics giant, was set to come to a head.

没有什么比激进股东更令高管们害怕的了。老板们睡不着觉，担心一个电话、一封信或一份长达100页的报告，因为报告中对冲基金会勾勒出他们的无能形象。今年年初，高管们尤为紧张。在今年的年度 "代理季"--即一系列股东大会--他们大多会避免对持不同意见的董事会候选人进行投票。然而，近几个月来，世界上一些巨头公司--包括Alphabet、拜耳、迪士尼和Salesforce--不得不与越来越关注大公司的激进人士发生争执。5月25日，当我们发表这篇文章时，著名激进投资家卡尔.伊坎与基因组学巨头Illumina之间的斗争即将达到白热化状态。

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Activist hedge funds are often seen as villains who are nasty, brutish and focused on the short term. Sometimes the shoe fits. But more often activists are playing a role that is essential for shareholder capitalism. For several reasons, their campaigns are increasingly important.

激进的对冲基金通常被视为恶棍，他们卑鄙、野蛮、只关注短期利益。有时候，这符合他们的形象。但更多时候，激进投资者扮演的角色对股东资本主义至关重要。以下几个原因表明他们的活动越来越重要。

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One is the rise of passive investing, which attempts to replicate the returns of an index rather than surpass them. Only one in three dollars invested by institutions in America’s thousand largest public companies is actively allocated, according to Man Group, an investment firm. The biggest passive asset-managers, such as BlackRock, charge low fees and run lean investment-stewardship teams which are not designed to spot empire-building bosses or lazy boards. The result is an increasingly idle corporate electorate. Efforts to enfranchise the ultimate owners of funds are unlikely to solve the problem. They typically want to earn returns but leave the decision-making to somebody else.

一是被动投资的兴起，这种方式试图复制大盘指数的回报率而不是超越它们。根据投资公司Man Group的数据，机构投资于美国最大的 1000 家上市公司的资金中，只有1/3的资金是主动投资。最大的被动资产管理公司（如贝莱德）收取较低的费用，有一支精简的投资管理团队，这些设计目的不是为了发现建立帝国的老板或懒惰的董事会。被动投资的结果是越来越多的企业选民会无所事事。赋予基金最终所有者权利的努力不太可能解决这个问题。他们通常想赚取回报，但把决策权留给别人。

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There are other channels by which bosses’ feet might be held to the fire. Since the 1980s leveraged buy-outs by private-equity firms have been a persistent threat to underperforming executives. The best way to deter a hostile takeover is to raise your company’s share price. Today, however, the buy-out industry is roiling from the effects of higher interest rates, and is unlikely to recover fully for some time.

还有其他渠道会给老板们施压。自1980年代以来，私募股权公司的杠杆收购一直对业绩不佳的高管构成威胁。阻止恶意收购的最好方法是提高公司的股价。然而，如今，收购行业正因利率上升的影响而自身难保，且在一段时间内不太可能完全恢复。

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While the routes by which managers are held to account have shrunk, the need to boost profits by applying discipline has grown. When interest rates were low, large technology firms hired aggressively and expanded into peripheral lines of business. Now profits are more important than growth. Over the past decade the demand for managers to respond to environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns has also grown. Some shareholders campaign for ESG—as is their right—but the danger of firms losing focus and wasting money as they are drawn into politics has increased.

尽管追究资金管理者责任的途径减少了，但通过遵守纪律来提高利润的需求却增加了。当利率较低时，大型技术公司积极招聘，并向外围业务领域扩张。现在，利润比增长更重要。在过去的十年里，对管理者回应环境、社会和治理（ESG）问题的要求也在增长。一些股东为ESG开展活动--这是他们的权利--但公司因卷入政治而失去焦点和资金打水漂的风险也在增加。

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In such an environment the presence of activists is a welcome reminder that it is owners, not managers, in whose interest firms should be run. And because dealmaking is down, activists will be more likely to improve a firm’s operations than force it to sell itself in search of a quick buck. That should assuage the fears of those who see activists as corporate cowboys rather than drivers of efficiency.

在这样的环境中，激进人士的出现值得欢迎，即公司的运营应该符合所有者的利益，而不是管理者的利益。而且由于交易减少，激进投资者更有可能改善公司的运营，而不是强迫出售公司本身来赚快钱。这应该有助于减轻一些人的担忧，因为这些人总认为激进人士只是企业投机者而非效率推动者。

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Fortunately, the job of activists is getting easier. New rules that came into force in America last September should make it simpler for them to obtain board seats by letting shareholders vote for candidates individually, rather than as a bloc. The wave of nail-biting shareholder votes some expected to follow immediately has not yet materialised. But more battles between activists and complacent managers would be no bad thing.

幸运的是，激进投资者的工作正变得越来越容易。去年9月在美国生效的新规则应使他们更容易获得董事会席位，即股东可以对候选人进行单独投票，而不是作为一个集团投票。一些人预测的随后会出现的一波股东投票潮紧张场面尚未出现。但激进投资者与自满的经理人之间多发生点争执并不是什么坏事。