Corporate upgraders

摘要

"If you want a friend on 1 Wall Street, get a dog," Carl Icahn once quipped. At the time his habit of buying shares in a company and picking a fight with management had got him ostracised as a "corporate raider" and "greenmailer". Oliver Stone borrowed the canine quip for Gordon Gekko, the cold-hearted protagonist of the film "Wall Street". Today, Mr Icahn does not need the dog: his conduct is applauded by such pillars of the establishment as the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the main regulator of America's financial markets: Mary Jo White believes that shareholder activism has lost its "distinctly negative connotation". That is partly because rule changes have made activism easier and therefore more commonplace. Nor is it restricted to America: shareholder activism is gaining in popularity around the world, in places such as Japan and continental Europe, where it was once unknown.