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...

The financial industry is gradually becoming more transparent to its customers, but also to its employees. Complying with the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, firms have begun to disclose their CEO pay compared with their median employee’s pay. InvestmentNews looked at their proxy filings and found that Wells Fargo ’s Tim Sloan was best-paid relative to his employees in 2017...

Photo: Getty Images Of the Trump administration’s two SEC nominees, one has blasted the DOL fiduciary rule, while the other’s position on the rule is unknown, writes InvestmentNews . Republican Hester Peirce, a senior fellow at the conservative Mercatus Center at George Mason University, has written that the rule is “rooted in the belief that investors cannot choose for themselves.” She has called for the SEC to take the lead on investor protection, and has called for a disclosure-based approach. Democrat Robert L. Jackson Jr., meanwhile, doesn’t appeared to have publically stated a view on the fiduciary rule ...

State regulators are placing more emphasis on investor protection, amid a federal pullback, CNBC reports. There are several examples of this trend in action. On Tuesday, Massachusetts announced an investigation into how several top U.S. brokerages handle customer buy and sell orders. Earlier in the summer, Nevada introduced a new fiduciary standard for brokers working in the state, even as a federal rule has been partially delayed...

Over $22 trillion of assets globally are now managed under responsible investment strategies...

So much for the Icahn put. Two years ago, activist investors were riding high—so high that just the announcement that activists had targeted a company could send its shares soaring, while the possibility that one could swoop in like a knight in shining armor was credited with putting a floor under certain kinds of stocks...

Why 2017 Could be a Year to Remember for Chipotle After a dismal 2016, shares of the burrito chain could get hot next year. By Dec. 30, 2016 1:24 p.m.

Activist investor Matt Drapkin practices big-stick diplomacy in the small-company world. When he sees management teams destroying shareholder value at what should be profitable companies, Drapkin asks for a seat on the board of directors—nicely, at first.

“There is an if-you-don’t path,” says Drapkin, 44, founding CEO of hedge fund shop Northern Right Capital Management. “It’s more hostile and aggressive and I’d prefer not to go down...

Despite government and ISS initiatives, governance change has fizzled. One reason: Domestic investors back low-performing managers...