This course is one of the New York City Immersion Seminars offered by Columbia Business School.  The immersion courses are designed to build upon our school’s advantageous location and access to captains of industry. The course, like other Immersion Course, takes place over four Fridays in Term B of the Spring Semester.

The rise of hedge fund activists during the past two decades has sparked debate across markets, boardrooms and even during the presidential campaign: are activist shareholders good or bad for business? This half-course elective provides an in-depth analysis of the key issues in activist investing from the perspectives of both investors and corporations that are potential targets of aggressive shareholder activism:

• What hedge fund activism is and why has it become important?
• The institutional background and legal rules governing activist investing – disclosure, insider trading, and voting, etc.
• How activism has reshaped corporate policies (including payouts, investments, and governance) and firm boundaries (via assets reallocation and spin-offs/acquisitions)? Has activism imposed “short-termist” pressure on corporate managers? 
• How the various constituencies (activists, targets, and advisors) should work together?

Class sessions consist of lectures and case discussions in the morning, and site visits or guest lectures by industry leaders in the afternoon.The guest speakers and speakers on sites will address in particular the key challenges they face and changes they foresee, and the types of skills they look for in recruiting.

Wei Jiang

Arthur F. Burns Professor of Free and Competitive Enterprise

Wei Jiang is Arthur F. Burns Professor of Free and Competitive Enterprise in the Finance Division at Columbia Business School.  She is also a Scholar-in-Residence at Columbia Law School, a Senior Fellow at the Program on Corporate Governance at Harvard Law School, and a Research Associate of the NBER—Law and Economics.  Professor Jiang received her B.A...

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