Michael O. Johnson, chairman and CEO of Herbalife, wrote this column in the Gazette about the rise of a new version activist investing, targeting companies such as Herbalife.
About 220 years ago, two dozen stockbrokers and merchants sat beneath a buttonwood tree on Wall Street and signed the famous Buttonwood Agreement forming the New York Stock and Exchange Board. This exchange, and the others that followed, ushered in a new era of free market capitalism and changed world history.
Through history, we have occasionally seen folks try to take advantage of the freedom this marketplace provides. Thankfully, the system of checks and balances has, for the most part, successfully identified and restrained these excesses to help insulate and safeguard the market.
Yet today, in the never-ending pursuit of an edge, some investors are using