저자: BillAckman · 외국인
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Bill Ackman는 액티비스트 투자의 개념과 역사를 설명하며, 지분을 쥐고 경영진과 이사회에 영향을 미쳐 기업을 개선하는 방식을 소개한다. 과거 Wendy's 사례(Tim Hortons 분리 가치 활용)와 General Growth 이사회 참여 경험을 언급한다. 패시브 인덱스 펀드 확대로 장기 주주 구조가 형성되어 단기 액티비스트의 영향력은 제한적이라고 주장한다. 액티비스트가 지분 5~10%만 보유해도 다른 주주 지지를 얻어 영향력을 행사할 수 있다고 설명한다.
다듬은 글
can you explain what activist investing is you've been talking about investing and then looking at companies when they're struggling stepping in and reconfiguring things within that company and helping it become great uh so that's part of it but let's just zoom out what what's this idea of activist investing I think recently in the last couple of days I read an article saying that more than 50% of the capital in the world today that's in in in the stock markets passive indexed money that's the most passive form right so if you think about an index fund a machine buys a fixed set of Securities in certain proportion uh there's no human Judgment at all and there's no real person behind it in a way um they never take steps to improve a business they just quietly own Securities what we do is we invest our capital in a handful of things you get to know them really really well because you're going to put 20% of your assets in something you need to know it really well but once you become a big holder and if you've got a some thoughts on how to make a business more valuable you can do more than just be a passive investor so our our strategy is built upon uh finding great companies in some cases that have lost their way and then helping them succeed and we can do that with ideas from outside the boardroom sometimes we take a seat at on a board or more than one um and we work with the best management teams in the world to help these businesses succeed so when I first went into this business no one knew who we were and we didn't have that much money and so to influence what was to us a big company uh we had to make a fair bit more noise right so we would buy a stake we announce it publicly we attempt to engage with management the first activist investment we made at Persian Square was Wendy's I couldn't get the Co to ever return my call didn't return my call so we actually in that case uh our idea was Wendy's owned a company called Tim Hortons which was this coffee donnut chain and you could buy Wendy's for basically $5 billion and they owned 100% of Tim Horton which itself was worth more than five billion so you could literally buy Wendy's separate Tim Hortons and get Wendy's for negative value that seemed like a pretty good opportunity even though the business wasn't doing that well uh so we bought the stake called the CEO couldn't get a meeting nothing so we hired actually Blackstone which was at that time had Investment Bank and we hired them to do what's called a fairness opinion of what Wendy's would be worth if they followed our advice and they agreed to do it paid them a fee for it and then we mailed in a letter with a copy of the fairness opinion saying monies would basically be worth 80% more if they did what we said and six weeks later they did what we said so that's activism at least an early form of activism with that kind of under our belt we had a little more credibility and now we started to take things and stakes in companies uh the media would pay attention so the media became kind of an important partner and uh you know some combination of Shame embarrassment and opportunity uh motivated management teams to do the right thing and then you know beyond that uh there's certain steps you can take if management is recalcitrant and the shareholders are on your side but it's a bit like running for office you've got to get all the constituents to support you and your ideas and if they support you in your ideas you can overthrow if you will the board of a company you bring in new talent and then take over the management of of a business and that's the most extreme form of activism so that's kind of the early days and what we did and a lot of the early things that we did were um you know call it uh what we call sort of like Investment Banking activism where we'd go in and recommend something a good investment bank would have recommended and if they do it we make a bunch of money and then we moved on to the next one and then we realized an investment in a company called General growth uh was the first time we took a board seat on a company and there was some Financial restructuring and also an opportunity to improve the operations of the business sit on the board of a company and that was one of the best investments we ever made and we said okay we can do more than just be an outside the boardroom investor and we can get involved in helping select the right management teams and helping guide the right management teams and then we've done that over years uh and then I would say the last seven years we haven't had to be an activist an activist is generally someone who's outside banging on the door trying to get in we're sort of built enough credibility that they open the door and they say hey Bill what ideas do you have so welcome would you like to join the board we're treated differently today than we were in the beginning and that uh um is I would say some people might just call it being an Engaged owner that by the way that's the way investing was done in the Andrew Carnegie JP Morgan days you know 150 years ago right you had these iconic Business Leaders that would own 20% of us steel and when things would go wrong they've replaced the board and the management and fixed them and over time we went to a world where mutual funds were created like in the 1920s 30s index funds uh with Vanguard and others and that all these controlling shareholders would you know kind of gave their stock to society or their children and multiple generations and were no longer kind of controlling owners of businesses or very few and that led to underperformance and the opportunity for for activists over time and what activism has done I think we've helped lead this movement is it restored kind of the balance of power between the owners of the business and the managements of the company and that's been a very good thing for the performance of the of the US Stock Market actually so the owners meaning the shareholders yes and so there's a more direct channel of communication with with activists investing between the shareholders and the people running the company yes so activists generally never own more than 5 or 10% of a business so they don't have control so the way they get influence is they have to convince the other you know they have to get to sort of a majority of the other shareholders to support them and if they can get that kind of support they can behave almost like a controlling shareholder and that's how it works so the running of a company is uh according to bill aan is more democratic now it is it is but you need some thought leaders so activists are kind of thought leaders because they can spend the time and the money uh you know retail investor that owns a thousand shares doesn't have the the the resources or the time they got a day job whereas an activist day job is finding the handful of things where there are opportunities so on average is it good to have such an Engaged powerful influential investor helping control direct the direction of a company it depends who that investor is but generally I think it's a good thing uh and that's why you know one of the problems with being CEO of a company today and having a very Diversified shareholder base is the kind of short-term long-term balance and you have investors who have all different interests in terms of what they want to achieve and when they want it achieved and uh CEO of a new company hasn't a new CEO of an old company let's say hasn't had the chance to develop The credibility uh to make uh the kind of longer term decisions and can be stuck in a cycle of being judged on a quarterly basis and a business the best businesses are forever assets and decisions you make now have impact three four five years from now in order to make and sometimes there are decisions we make that have the effect of of reducing the earnings of a company in the short term because in the long term it's going to make the business much more valuable uh but it sometimes it's hard to have that kind of credibility when you're a new CEO of a company so when you have a major owner uh that's respected by other shareholders sitting on the board saying hey the CEO is doing the right thing and making this expensive investment in a new Factory we're spending more money on R&D uh because we're developing something that's going to pay off over time that large owner on the board uh can help buy the time necessary for management to behave in a longer term way and that's I think good for all the shareholders so that's the good story but can it get bad can you have a a CEO who is a Visionary and sees the long-term future of a company and an investor come in and have very selfish interest in just making more money in the short term and therefore destroy and and manipulate the opinions of the shareholders and other people on the board in order to syn the company maybe increase the increase the price but uh destroy the possibility of long-term value it could theoretic ially happen but again the the activist in your example J doesn't own a lot of stock uh the shareholder bases today the biggest shareholders are these index funds that are forever right the Black Rock Vanguard State Street their ownership Stakes are just at this point only growing because of the inflows of capital they have from shareholders so they have to think or they should think very long term and they're going to be very skeptical of someone coming in with a short-term idea that drives the stock price up you know in the next six months but impairs the company's long-term ability to compete and basically that ownership group uh prevents this kind of activity from really happening so people are generally skeptical shortterm activist investors yes they're and they're very few I don't really know any short-term activist investors that's a not ones with credibility
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