Shareholder activism has its roots in hostile takeover bids of the 1980s, when corporate raiders were viewed negatively

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• Business Ethics
•  
• CASE STUDY (20 Marks)
• Shareholder activism has its roots in
  hostile takeover bids of the 1980s, when
  corporate raiders were viewed negatively by the
  media and shareholders. By the 1990s, thinking
  about the best structure for companies was
  shifting to reflect the idea that shareholders
  should have more of a say over companies'
  destinies. Today, the activists are massive
  corporations in their own right. Today, it is
  often the case that activist funds are worth more
  than the companies they are targeting. The amount
  of capital available to shareholder activists has
  gone up dramatically, including from asset
  classes with a lot of money, such as pension
  funds. Institutional investors are working with
  activists at an increasing rate. The campaigns
  are comprehensive. Activist shareholders now hire
  investment banks and the best law firms,
  outpacing the resources individual companies
  apply to the same analysis.

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• The current wave of change is focused on
  boards. Shareholders want someone who is an
  investor on the board. It's becoming best
  practice to welcome someone with investing
  experience onto the board, in part to benefit
  from their perspective but also to preempt
  activist demands for an investor to join the
  board. "A lot of people defer to ISS." (ISS is
  the largest of the activist proxy advisory firms)
  "A big concern is that companies and activists
  are fundamentally operating from the perspective
  of a different timeframe." "We like to build
  value over a long period of time to invest in a
  technology that may not have a payoff for 10
  years, or to invest in research and development."
  "Typically the entry point for activists is
  sloppy corporate governance." "I see a lot of
  really good people that don't want to be on
  boards anymore." How that so-called big data is
  providing access to information that would not
  previously have been discovered, what are the
  ethical boundaries around companies use of this
  data? A panel of experts discussed Ethical Use
  of Collected Data as part of the Business and
  Organizational Ethics Partnership at Santa Clara
  Universitys Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.

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• The panelists included Shannon Vallor, associate
  professor of philosophy at Santa Clara
  University Scott Shipman, general counsel and
  chief privacy officer at Sensity Systems and
  MeMe Jacobs Rasmussen, chief privacy officer at
  Adobe Systems. The panel was moderated by Irina
  Raicu, director of Internet ethics at the Ethics
  Center. Vallor opened the discussion with an
  explanation of how big data is used and some of
  the ethical issues it raises. The applications
  are virtually boundless, given that consumers are
  generating and we are collecting and storing
  unprecedented volumes of data in all sectors
  private, public, heath care, education, commerce
  and entertainment, Vallor said. We are being
  overwhelmed by the promise of big data to solve
  persistent challenges in public health, criminal
  justice and other areas. But there are risks as
  well as benefits to using big data. Privacy is
  one of the biggest issues, given the volume of
  data that is being collected. Consumers are
  justifiably concerned not only about what the
  company that collects the data will do with it,
  but also how it will be protected from third
  parties.

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• Answer the following question.
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• Q1. Debate the dictum, Say what you do, do what
  you say, and dont surprise the user, in
  relation to the ethical use of the big data being
  collected by the companies.

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