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Sureholder activism really only matters if it causes the firm to sell itself, to spin out something

for sale or to sell some assets. Their governance initiatives are worthless or strategic

initiatives are worthless. Hello and welcome to the Baron Streetwise podcast. I'm Jack Howe.

And the voice you just heard is JB Heaton. He's an investment lawyer and academic researcher who

has studied the results of activist investors. Those are the ones that buy steaks and big

underperforming companies, then they demand board seats, strategy changes, and JB finds that

these swashbuckling defenders of shareholder value against the forces of corporate squander and

an aptitude don't generally have such great ideas. On average, we'd be better off sticking

money in a stock index fund than turning it over to an activist fund. More from JB and others

on activist investing in a moment. Listening in is our audio producer Jackson. Hi Jackson.

Hey, Jack. Just before we started recording, you were talking about basketball and you had a

basketball activist investor analogy in the column this week. The peeweed that my son plays

is kind of more of a more of a peeweed basketball circuit near the coach. I don't know if I want to

mention you coach. He plays out three teams. You coach peeweed. I coach one of them. Okay,

yes. I coach one of them. I'm a parent in the stands on the other one, two of the other ones.

And the parrots, you know, they coach from the stands. You're not supposed to do that,

but it's hard not to. You say, hey, you know, put your hands up. Cool for the ball. You know,

so I just the analogy I use is picture one of those parents walking over the bench, sitting down,

grabbing the clipboard, and then you start telling the kids, hey, stop chucking from the outside.

You got to hit the boards. You go turn your shorts right side out in the locker room. And, you know,

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