The dark cloud of the international credit crunch caused by the United States’ subprime mortgage defaults may yet have a small silver lining for public companies: the real possibility of a decline in hedge fund activism.[FOOTNOTE 1] In recent years, hedge fund activists have leveraged themselves into large stock positions and used that platform to maximize their own short-term gains. Ignoring the long-term interests of public companies and the interests of traditional shareholders, hedge fund activists often have pressured companies to sell themselves, in whole or in part, or to incur significant debt to fund large scale stock buybacks. Now that funding for leveraged buyouts is difficult to obtain and the corporate credit market has made it significantly more onerous for companies to incur additional leverage, it should be much harder for activist hedge funds to acquire or profit from the degree of influence that they have enjoyed in the recent past.

It is important to note that not all hedge funds are alike and that the term is frequently overused by the media. Activist hedge funds need to be differentiated from the type of hedge funds that a company ought to view as friendly, long-term investors that appear to be genuinely committed to value creation for all shareholders over a significant period of time (as opposed to short-term speculators). In addition, activist hedge funds, unlike long-term investors, often hedge their economic risk by using derivatives and other trading strategies that effectively allow them to vote shares over which they have little or no economic interest.

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