外刊每日精读 Seize the day

外刊每日精读 | Seize the day
文章脉络
【1】股东行动主义让高管们感到害怕。

【2】更多时候，激进投资者扮演的角色对股东资本主义至关重要。

【3】原因一：被动投资的兴起让企业选民越来越无所事事。

【4】原因二：企业收购减少。

【5】原因三：提高利润的需求增加了。

【6】激进投资者的存在是个可喜的提醒。

【7】激进投资者与自满的管理者之间多发生点斗争并非坏事。

经济学人原文
Investor activism：Seize the day (and the board)
Why activist investors are needed more than ever
【1】Little scares the C-suite like shareholder activism. Bosses stay awake worrying about a call, a letter or a 100-page presentation in which
a hedge fund outlines the depths of their ineptitude. At the start of the year executives were especially on edge. During this year’s annual “proxy season”—
a succession of shareholder meetings—they have mostly avoided votes
on dissident nominees to their boards. Nevertheless in recent months some of the world’s largest firm s—including Alphabet, Bayer, Disney and Salesforce—have had to tussle with activists, who are increasingly focused on the biggest companies. On May 25th, as we published this article, the battle between Carl Icahn,
a prominent activist, and Illumina, a genomics giant, was set to come to a head.
【2】Activist hedge funds are often seen as villains who are nasty, brutish and focused on the short term. Sometimes the shoe fits. But more often activists are playing a role that is essential for shareholder capitalism. For several reasons,
their campaigns are increasingly important.
【3】One is the rise of passive investing, which attempts to replicate the returns of an index rather than surpass them. Only one in three
dollars invested by institutions in America’s thousand largest public companies is actively allocated, according to Man Group, an investment firm. The
biggest passive asset-managers, such as BlackRock, charge low fees and
run lean investment-stewardship teams which are not designed to spot empire-building bosses or lazy boards. The result is an
increasingly idle corporate electorate. Efforts to enfranchise the ultimate owners of
funds are unlikely to solve the problem. They typically want to earn returns but leave the decision-making to somebody else.
【4】There are other channels by which bosses’ feet might be held to the fire. Since the 1980s leveraged buy-outs by private-equity firms have been a persistent threat to underperforming executives. The best way to deter a hostile takeover is to raise your company’s share price. Today, however, the buy-out industry is roiling from the effects of higher interest rates, and is unlikely to recover fully for some time.
【5】While the routes by which managers are held to account have shrunk, the need to boost profits by applying discipline has grown. When interest rates were low, large technology firms hired aggressively and expanded into peripheral lines of business. Now profits are more important than growth. Over the past decade the demand for managers to respond to environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns has also grown. Some shareholders campaign for ESG—as is their right—but the danger of firms losing focus and wasting money as they are drawn into politics has increased. 【6】In such an environment the presence of activists is a welcome reminder that it
is owners, not managers, in whose interest firms should be run. And because dealmaking is down, activists will be more likely to improve a firm’s operations than force it to sell itself in search of a quick buck. That should assuage the fears of those who see activists as corporate cowboys rather than drivers of efficiency.
【7】Get out the vote
Fortunately, the job of activists is getting easier. New rules that came into force in America last September should make it simpler for them to obtain board seats by letting shareholders vote for candidates individually, rather than as a bloc. The wave of nail-biting shareholder votes some expected to follow immediately has not yet materialised. But more battles between activists and complacent managers would be no bad thing.
长难句：
1. 原文：One is the rise of passive investing, which attempts to replicate the returns of an index rather than surpass them.
2. 分析：该句主句的结构为主（One）系（is）表（the rise of passive investing）；which引导非限制性定语从句，先行词是passive investing，定语从
句的结构是主（which）谓（attempts ）宾（to replicate the returns of an index）.
3.译文：其一是被动投资的兴起，这种投资方式试图复制指数的回报率，而不是超越指数。