Seven Deadly Fallacies of Activist Investing’s Critics

Attacks on activist investing often tread a familiar and well-worn road, long on inflammatory rhetoric and specious arguments and short on reason and respect for the facts. A recent example is a commentary by two Wachtell Lipton lawyers entitled “Corporate Governance Update: Holding Activists and Proxy Advisory Firms Accountable,” published in the New York Law Journal on May 26, 2016. The article’s message, like so many criticisms of activist investing, is built on seven fatal fallacies.