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Activist Investor

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Sustainable Management

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Abstract

An activist investor is an individual or group who acquires a stake of shares in a publicly listed company with the intention to have influence over it. Activist investors include pension funds, institutional funds with a social or environmental mission, hedge funds, and individual investors. Activists possess a stake in company ownership that enables such person or institution to have influence in decision-making over the company strategic development, investment, and profit distribution. Exercising their rights as partial owners, activist investors challenge executives, engage in the discussions on corporate matters, and submit proposals of the resolutions to be voted during the shareholder meeting. Since they are often well-known members of the investor community, they are likely to encourage other shareholders to support their proposals and implement changes in the targeted companies. Their primary focus is to improve financial performance of the company and increase shareholder value. Yet, activist investors have the potential to submit proposals related to ESG performance and disclosure.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Management Theory, Warsaw School of Economics, Warsaw, Poland

    Maria Aluchna

Authors
  1. Maria Aluchna
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Correspondence to Maria Aluchna .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. London Metropolitan University, Guildhall Faculty of Business and Law London Metropolitan University, London, UK

    Samuel Idowu

  2. Cologne Business School, Ingolstadt, Germany

    René Schmidpeter

  3. College of Business, Loyola University New Orleans, New Orleans, LA, USA

    Nicholas Capaldi

  4. International Training Centre of the IL, International Labor Organization, Turin, Italy

    Liangrong Zu

  5. Department of Economics, Society and Politics, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Urbino, Italy

    Mara Del Baldo

  6. Instituto Politécnico da Guarda, Guarda, Portugal

    Rute Abreu

Section Editor information

  1. Ethics, Gender and Sustainability Research Group, Economics and Business Department, University of Almería, Almería, Spain

    Pedro Antonio Martín-Cervantes

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Aluchna, M. (2022). Activist Investor. In: Idowu, S., Schmidpeter, R., Capaldi, N., Zu, L., Del Baldo, M., Abreu, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Sustainable Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02006-4_813-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02006-4_813-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-02006-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-02006-4

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Business and ManagementReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

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