Moody’s chopped its rating on SoftBank Group debt by two notches Wednesday. The move came as a surprise to the Japanese telecom giant, which responded by asking Moody’s to withdraw all of its ratings on the company , arguing that the ratings agency has “biased and mistaken views.” The spat comes at a surprising moment. SoftBank shares (ticker: SFTBY) have had a big run over the last few days, up 55% since Friday...

Amid a long-running bull market, it can be easy to forget that trust in our market system is built on the subtle rules that guide interactions. Now, a crucial investor safeguard is under attack by the very institution whose mission it is to protect investors and promote transparency...

Parsing CEO pay can be a chore. It’s broken down by base salary, target bonuses, target long term incentive awards, pensions, separate milestones and signing bonuses. It’s Byzantine. It’s enough to say American CEOs are well compensated...

The early hours of the new trading year haven’t been any friendlier to Canadian cannabis stocks. Shares of all the biggest names, aside from Hexo , were down more than 4% just before 2 p.m. on Thursday. Aurora Cannabis stock (ticker: ACB) was down 6%, a bad start for a stock that’s shed 60% of its value in the past year...

Hedge-fund investor Richard Merage is taking some money from his, uh, hot pockets and pushing for change at Groupon...

Xerox Holdings’ bid for HP Inc. has become nastier, with the company now threatening a hostile takeover bid to combine the printer companies...

Trying to understand executive pay is a guaranteed descent into lunacy. How much pay is too much—or not enough? When does pay incentivize performance—and when does it spawn complacency? Can CEOs be aligned with shareholders by dousing them in stock options? Isn’t excessive pay analogous to certain addictive substances—the more you get, the more you need? When, pray tell, is pay fair? These questions dance around a coming trial in Delaware’s Chancery Court...

The National Business Aviation Association , or NBAA, show started in Las Vegas on Tuesday. It’s like a car show, but with jets—a hot topic these days. Private jet use is in the spotlight after an activist criticized Emerson Electric ’s (ticker: EMR) private jet “fleet” when arguing for lower costs. Many companies use private jets—including PG&E (PCG) and Facebook (FB)—but they don’t tend to advertise it...

AT&T ’s board got an unwelcome surprise this past Monday, when a well-known activist investor decided to question the company’s long-honed—and expensive—strategy. For investors, though, Elliott Management’s new focus on AT&T is likely to have positive long-term benefits...

Cloudera this morning said it reached a standstill agreement with investor Carl Icahn, granting the corporate raider two board seats. Icahn affiliates hold a total of about 18.4% of Cloudera’s common stock, about 50.3 million shares, a stake worth a little over $300 million...

FedEx was moving on Tuesday, rising 2.5%, better than the market’s gain, as investors attempted to triangulate what’s next for activist investor Bill Ackman and his fund, Pershing Square. Pershing announced on Monday it had sold its $700-plus million position in United Technologies (ticker: UTX) stock.

Carl Icahn is seeing red. In a letter Monday blasting Occidental Petroleum ’s management and board, Icahn, the billionaire activist investor and Occidental shareholder, asserted that Warren Buffett took Occidental CEO Vicki Hollub “to the cleaners” when Occidental (ticker: OXY) agreed to issue $10 billion of preferred stock to Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) in late April. That preferred carries an 8% dividend yield, and Berkshire also got valuable warrants on Occidental stock...

Investors haven’t seemed happy about United Technologies’ blockbuster deal to merge its aerospace division with defense contractor Raytheon. But United Tech’s latest quarterly results show shareholders have no reason to worry, according to the industrial conglomerate’s CFO. CFO Akhil Johri is excited by the potential Raytheon merger benefits and believes the market may be missing several key benefits. To start, he highlighted United Tech’s strong record for past deals...

At age 53, the activist investor Bill Ackman is having the best year of his career . And for those who want to invest alongside him, there is now an opportunity to get in at a big discount. Ackman’s closed-end fund, Pershing Square Holdings (ticker PSH. Netherlands), closed Tuesday at $17.90 a share, a 28% discount to its net asset value of $24.92 on June 30...

New voting rules from a popular investment adviser mean that some well-known asset managers—including Pimco—are opposing company management at annual shareholder meetings. Typically, proxy season is a springtime ritual during which dissident shareholders voice their frustrations with corporate management, institutional investors side with the CEO, and little is accomplished.

Carl Icahn’s latest target is Occidental Petroleum . He has blasted the company for its “hugely overpriced acquisition of Anadarko Petroleum ” and for disenfranchising shareholders by refusing to allow them to vote on the deal . While there is little the activist investor can do to stop the $38 billion acquisition, he is adding to the growing shareholder pressure on Occidental (ticker: OXY)—and that could be bullish for its depressed stock...

Vanguard Group’s tough stance on directors serving on too many boards—sometimes called “overboarding”—has started to bite, says Don Bilson, head of event-driven research at Gordon Haskett...

Nelson Peltz’s Trian Fund Management has sold Procter & Gamble (ticker: PG) for the first time since Peltz joined the company’s board after a contentious election two years ago...

PG&E (ticker: PCG) may have filed for bankruptcy, but BlueMountain Capital is still lobbying for change at the company. The hedge fund and the embattled California utility are gearing up to make competing board changes at or before its annual shareholder meeting on May 21, where BlueMountain plans to put forward a brand new slate of directors. The fund said Wednesday it has selected those directors, and will announce its choices soon...

Activist fund Starboard Value had a busy weekend. The Wall Street Journal broke news that Starboard CEO Jeff Smith is becoming chairman of embattled pizza chain Papa John’s International (ticker: PZZA). Bloomberg reported the hedge fund has taken a stake in Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY)...

Activist investor Bill Ackman is enjoying a modest revival this year after three terrible years of investment performance...

Mark Nov. 29 on your calendar. That’s the day Campbell Soup (ticker: CPB), in a full proxy filed Thursday, set for the showdown between the company and activist investor Third Point, which is seeking to replace the entire Campbell Soup board. To say Third Point was unimpressed with Campbell’s recent strategic review would be an understatement...

Where we're headed: Campbell shares are higher today, on hopes that activist investor Third Point will push for more changes....

Carl Icahn has waded into one of the insurance industry’s biggest messes in years. On Monday, the activist investor wants shareholders to vote against a buyout by the founding family of AmTrust Financial Services, a troubled firm that is one of America’s largest insurers of workplace injuries...