Carl Icahn is an activist investor with a penchant for confronting incompetent, misguided or complacent corporate management, but he is wrong to oppose the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed new rules for proxy advisory firms (“Let Proxy Advisers Do Their Work,” op-ed, Nov. 19)...
Activist investor Starboard Value LP has taken a stake in CVS Health Corp. and held talks with the drugstore-and-insurance giant’s management, according to people familiar with the matter. The stake appears to be relatively small and the people said the talks, held recently, are amicable. How much Starboard currently owns and what it has discussed with the company couldn’t be learned...
Roadrunner Transportation faltered in an economic boom period and now is trying to rebuild with freight far harder to come by...
McDonald’s Corp. MCD -2.72% said it would pay former Chief Executive Steve Easterbrook six months in severance after firing him due to a relationship with an employee that broke company policy. The burger giant said in a filing on Monday that the agreement absolved McDonald’s of liability resulting from Mr. Easterbrook’s termination and barred him from working for another fast-food company for two years...
Division holding DirecTV sheds 1.4 million pay-TV customers in latest quarter; WarnerMedia revenue slips AT&T Inc.’s struck a truce with an activist investor that had been pressuring the telecom giant to revamp its strategy and said its chief executive will stay at the helm through next year. The deal came as the company reported another quarter revealing the challenges of moving beyond its traditional telephone business. Overall, quarterly profit and revenue declined from a year ago...
The activist that shook up CSX Corp. has wound down most of its investment in the railroad operator, marking an end to a three-year saga that helped spur a massive overhaul of the U.S. railroad industry. Paul Hilal’s investment vehicle, Mantle Ridge LP, has sold off nearly all of its $1 billion position in CSX, according to securities filings...
U.K. lawmakers voted Saturday to postpone a final vote on Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s deal to split with the European Union. The move delays any decision by Parliament over the pact and forced Mr. Johnson to ask for another Brexit delay...
This year, 478 nominees for U.S. board seats failed to win support from a majority of voted shares, a 39% jump from 2015...
TOKYO—Some Nissan Motor Co. directors will demand at Tuesday’s board meeting to see a list of around 80 Nissan employees who may have assisted former Chairman Carlos Ghosn in alleged wrongdoing...
Commission urges proxy advisers to take more steps to disclose how they craft their shareholder recommendations WASHINGTON—Public companies were set to notch a victory in a fight to curb the impact of consultants who influence shareholder votes on topics such as executive pay...
Activist investor calls for Care.com to consider a sale, but even that may not be enough to restore parents’ lost trust Care.com’s days as an independent matchmaker could be limited. New York-based activist investor Engine Capital L.P. is calling for the company to explore a sale in the wake of The Wall Street Journal’s March investigation which showed it provided limited vetting of its caregivers, sometimes with tragic results...
Occidental Petroleum Corp. Chief Executive Vicki Hollub is eager to move forward following her $38 billion deal to buy Anadarko Petroleum Corp. But first she has to deal with Carl Icahn, who is trying to bring Ms. Hollub’s predecessor back into the boardroom. The activist investor has already pushed for four seats on Occidental’s board, arguing that Ms. Hollub ignored investors and made costly rookie mistakes in her bid to outduel Chevron Corp. for Anadarko...
As Facebook Inc. FB -0.56% ’s co-founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg holds extraordinary sway over the social-media giant. Wednesday’s historic settlement with the Federal Trade Commission keeps his power largely intact, even as it calls for the board to tighten the reins on the company’s privacy practices...
A stubborn paradox reigns across U.S. boardrooms: Companies are appointing more women to board seats than ever, yet the overall share of female directors is barely budging...
Vanguard Group is taking a tougher stance against companies whose board members it believes are stretched too thin.
The world’s second-largest asset manager plans to vote, in most cases, against corporate executives running for two or more public-company board seats beyond where they are employed, a Vanguard spokeswoman said. Vanguard said it would generally vote against other board candidates seeking more than four board seats at one time...
Tim Armstrong, the former leader of AOL, is walking away with more than $60 million as he leaves Verizon Communications Inc., which recently wrote down half the value of the internet business he led...
Activist investor Land & Buildings Investment Management LLC is seeking a seat on the board of Marriott International Inc., according to people familiar with the matter, and believes the world’s biggest hotel company should narrow its brand portfolio among other changes...
Companies with experienced technologists on their board outperform others in areas such as revenue growth, return on assets and market capitalization growth, according to a study released this week by Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Information Systems Research...
Newell Brands Inc. NWL -0.92% Chief Executive Michael Polk is under pressure from the board of directors to prove his turnaround is working following several disappointing quarters of sales at the household-goods conglomerate, according to people familiar with the matter...
A push by corporate governance experts, shareholders and, in some cases, regulators to untangle the chairman and chief executive positions at U.S. public companies is gaining traction.
The percentage of S&P 500 companies whose chief executives also serve as chairman reached 45.6% in 2018, compared with 48.7% the year before and the lowest percentage in at least a decade, according to data compiled for The Wall Street Journal by ISS Analytics, the data intelligence arm of proxy adviser Institutional Shareholder Services Inc...
WASHINGTON—Publicly traded companies could have to put to a shareholder vote thorny proposals that they oppose if the government shutdown doesn’t end soon.
That is because the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is operating with a skeleton staff, must sign off on requests by companies to exclude proposals from a vote a...
Edward D. Breen just spent the last three years merging industrial bastions DuPont Co. and Dow Chemical Co. His next act? Taking the combination apart all over again...
Lawmakers, faculty and students are demanding more accountability from university boards as sexual-abuse and other scandals continue to shake U.S. campuses.
The boards that oversee universities have remained largely intact at schools including Michigan State University and the University of Southern California, where...
HOUSTON—Billionaire John D. Arnold is spending a chunk of his fortune to campaign against America's high drug prices. The drug industry is spending a chunk of its fortune to counter him.
Mr. Arnold is the biggest single spender on his side of the battle. He made his money placing bets on price swings in the natural-gas market, first as an energy trader at Enron, then at his own hedge fund...