Barbarians in the Boardroom: Activist Investors and the Battle for Control of the World’s Most Powerful Companies

Author

Owen Walker

Genre

Investing

Last Read

February 18, 2024

Cover

Stars

★★★★★

In contrast to “Dear Chairman”, this book goes into more detail on recent activist campaigns and also sheds some light on Europe and Japan. Highly recommend this one, (I first read this in 2019 alongside “Dear Chairman”, another memorable book). Chapter 11 (I have split it into a, b and c) is great. Please see my Kindle highlights from my re-read below:

Highlights

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1. Who are activist investors?

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2. What activists want and how they get it?

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3. Boardroom coup at Darden Restaurants

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4. The many sieges of Yahoo

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5. Allergan and the unorthodox alliance

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6. DuPont’s pyrrhic victory

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7. Microsoft’s pivotal truce

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8. Hewlett-Packard’s beleagured board

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9. Walgreens and the Boots trojan horse

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10. Alliance Trust’s eleventh-hour ceasefire

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11a. March of the activists

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11b. Behind Europe’s closed doors

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11c. Asia leaves its door ajar

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12. Burden of expectation