Last week, Nelson Peltz’s hedge fund Trian lost a proxy fight at DuPont. The outcome of the battle received much attention, among others because the “passive” investors Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street were instrumental in making his bid fail – they voted against him. Commentators have ex-post rationalized the failure of the campaign with gaps in some of Peltz’s arguments, his personality, and other factors. Curiously, nobody seems to have taken a look at how Peltz’s and the “passive” funds’ economic incentives differed. This note takes a first look at those, and comes to rather interesting conclusions.
Reflections on research, capitalism, and research on capitalism
