Dusseldorf Whoever shouts the loudest wins: there seems to be a lot of truth to this sentence. At least when it comes to activist investors. Their strategy, broken down to the essentials: to buy small shares in a company, then formulate loud demands and, above all, look for like-minded people among those who have invested in the longer term, who support these demands and give them more weight.
Exactly how this works could be observed in the past few weeks using the example of Bayer. The pharmaceutical and agrochemical giant recently announced a change of CEO at the top of the company, much earlier than expected. Werner Baumann will be replaced prematurely by Bill Anderson in June of this year. This has not least to do with the pressure that the relatively small shareholders Bluebell Capital, Elliott and Inclusive Capital have been exerting for a few weeks.
The replacement of the CEO post by an external candidate was one of the key demands of the activists. So it has already been fulfilled. But the demands go even further: It is about the splitting up of the Bayer group. The activists assume that the increase in value for Bayer could be up to 70 percent in the event of a gradual split.
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