Recent years have seen a rise in shareholder activist campaigns, particularly in Europe and Asia. The growth in attention to ESG and sustainability issues has broadened the scope of potential campaigns. IR professionals across the globe now require a comprehensive understanding of shareholder activism, the nature of activist campaigns and how to react to them.
In this report we examine the experiences of and views toward shareholder activism of three key stakeholders: IROs, the buyside community and sell-side analysts. Understanding of the IRO perspective is taken from the IR Magazine Global IR Survey 2019, conducted in Q2 2019. Views from the buy side and sell side are from our Global Investor Survey 2019, with fieldwork conducted in Q4. Many of the findings in this report are broken down regionally, the three key regions being North America, Europe and Asia. Data in the IRO view section of this report is also broken down by market cap.
For the purposes of this report, market cap sizes are defined as follows: