Business
商业报道
Corporate Governance
公司治理
Anything you can do, Icahn do better
无论你做什么，伊坎总能做得比你好
The pressure on companies from activist shareholders continues to grow
激进投资人对公司的压力正与日俱增
TIM COOK'S nightmare is over, but John Donahoe's has just begun.
蒂姆·库克的噩梦算是结束了，可约翰·多纳霍的噩梦才刚刚开始。
On February 10th Carl Icahn, the godfather of activist shareholders, ended his campaign to get Mr Cook, the boss of Apple, to return some of its 160 billion cash mountain to shareholders through share buy-backs.
2月10号，激进投资界的教父级人物卡尔·伊坎停止了对苹果总裁库克的公开施压。伊坎此次行动的目标是让苹果通过股权回购，将其1600亿美元的巨额资产部分返还给股东们。
2_副本.jpgMr Icahn declared victory, although Apple is not handing back as much of its cash as he had wanted.
伊坎宣告获胜，尽管苹果并未打算把钱悉数奉上。
His next target is eBay, which he is pressuring to spin off PayPal, its online-payments business.
如今他正向他下一个目标易趣施压，要求其剥离线上支付业务Paypal。
Mr Donahoe, eBay's boss, has told Mr Icahn to get lost, but surely knows he cannot brush off the pugilistic investor so easily.
易趣总裁约翰·多纳霍已经跟伊坎表示让他滚开，但他当然明白要摆脱这位强势的投资人可没那么容易
A visit from an activist shareholder is now a possibility for any publicly traded company:
现在的公开上市公司，随时都可能碰上某位激进投资人的莅临访问。
if not the 77-year-old Mr Icahn, then one of the growing army of younger imitators he has inspired.
就算不是77岁的卡尔·伊坎，也可以是他鼓动的越来越多的年轻效仿者之一。
Mr Cook was first put under pressure to stop hoarding cash last year by David Einhorn, boss of Greenlight Capital, a hedge fund.
首先是去年对冲基金绿光资本老总大卫·艾因霍恩要求蒂姆不要再继续囤积现金。
Having shaken up Yahoo's management and strategy in 2012, Dan Loeb and his fund, Third Point, have turned their attention to Sony, calling for it to separate its electronics and entertainment arms; to Sotheby's, an auction house they want to repurchase shares; and to Dow Chemical, which they want to shed its petrochemicals business.
继2012年整顿完雅虎的管理及战略，丹·勒布和他的第三点基金开始将目光转向索尼、苏富比拍卖行和陶氏化学，要求拆分索尼的电子和娱乐业务，回购苏富比股权，剥离陶氏化学的石油化工业务。
Nelson Peltz, who has been a shareholder activist almost as long as Mr Icahn, last month joined the board of Mondelez, a snacks business he had targeted.
上月，资历和伊坎相差无几的激进投资人尼尔森·佩尔兹加入了亿滋董事会，一个他决定收拾的食品公司。
TCI, a London-based fund run by Chris Hohn, has rediscovered its activist mojo after having been badly hurt by the financial crisis.
TCI基金在遭受金融危机重创之后，重新发现了激进投资的魔力。
Last year it urged EADS to sell its military-planes business, and took on the management of Japan Tobacco.
该基金总部位于伦敦、总裁为克莱斯·霍恩。去年，它要求欧洲航空防务航天公司出售其军用飞机业务，还和日本烟草产业公司较上了劲。
Steve Ballmer was helped on his way out of Microsoft's top job by ValueAct Capital, run by Mason Morfit.
史蒂夫·鲍尔默丢掉微软CEO一职，也多亏了梅森·默菲特的ValueAct资本的帮忙。
Last month Bill Ackman'sPershing Squaremade a tasty profit when Suntory acquired Beam, which had been spun out of Fortune Brands as a result of his activism.
上月，三得利收购Beam让比尔·阿克曼的对冲基金潘兴广场狠赚了一笔。阿克曼的积极运作促成Beam脱离富俊集团，
But Mr Ackman has also demonstrated that activists have no monopoly on wisdom: Ron Johnson, the new boss he lobbied for J.C. Penney to install in 2011, made things worse at the struggling retailer, and lasted just 17 months.
但也正是他让人们发现激进分子并不是永远正确：2011年阿克曼鼓动彭尼百货把总裁之位交给荣·约翰逊，而约翰逊却让这个麻烦不断的零售商雪上加霜，17个月后他便离职了。
Mr Ackman has been at loggerheads with Messrs Icahn and Loeb over Herbalife, a nutritional-supplements business.
阿克曼就保健品公司康宝莱与伊坎和勒布先生展开了对决。
Mr Ackman has shorted its shares, calling the firm a pyramid scheme.
阿克曼做空康宝莱股票，并称其用的是金字塔式的传销骗术；他的对手则大举买进该公司股票。
His rivals have gone long on them. So far, Mr Ackman is out of pocket.
截至目前，阿克曼已经赔得精光了。
The activists' growing influence has many causes,
激进投资人影响力的增加有多重原因。
including rule changes that have given shareholders more voting power and have made institutional investors cast their votes more thoughtfully.
规则的改变使股东获得了更多的投票权，也使机构投资人在投票时更谨慎。
Social media have made it easier for activists to mount a campaign: Mr Icahn now tweets like a budgie on speed.
社交媒体使他们能更容易地发起一场运动：伊坎现在发推文快得就像一只鹦鹉在叫唤。
And, says Bob Monks, a campaigner for shareholder rights, Mr Icahn has had a huge impact by making it clear to the greediest people in the world that you can make a lot of money out of activism.
一直为股东权益奔走的鲍勃·孟克思称，伊坎之所以有如此影响力，是因为他让世界上最贪婪的人们清楚的看到，通过激进的运作可以赚很多很多钱。
It is the way these profits are made that is the focus of the activists' critics.
对激进投资人的质疑集中在这些钱是怎么赚来的。
Activists usually buy a block of shares, make a public call for change and lobby management and other shareholders to implement it.
他们通常先买下一大堆股票，再公开呼吁变革，然后鼓动管理层和其他股东执行这一改革方案。
When they do, the activists sell at a profit.
当管理层当真照做时，激进投资人便卖出股票，获取利润。
Martin Lipton, a lawyer who has long helped protect incumbent management, not least by inventing the poison pill, a potent defence against takeovers, argues that activists encourage firms to do things that boost their share price in the short run but harm their long-term performance.
马丁·利普顿是一名律师，长期致力于保护现任管理层，特别是通过他发明的能够有效抵制收购的毒丸策略。他认为，这些激进投资人鼓励公司做的事情能在短期推高公司股价，却会伤害到其长期表现。
This critique has plenty of adherents, in academia, business and government.
这一批评在学术界、商界和政府有诸多拥护者。
Where's the evidence?
证据在哪里？
Yet empirical proof that activists exacerbate short-termism is strangely elusive.
但奇怪的是，鲜有证据证明激进投资人确实激化了企业的短视行为。
Indeed, such evidence as there is suggests the opposite.
从现有的证据看，事实正好相反。
The Long-Term Effects of Hedge-Fund Activism, a recent paper by Lucian Bebchuk ofHarvardLawSchooland others, examined the roughly 2,000 interventions at companies by activist funds from 1994 to 2007.
哈佛大学法学院的卢西恩·别布丘克与他人合著的论文《对冲基金激进主义的长期效应》调查了从1994到2007年间激进对冲基金对公司2000次左右的干预。
Over the five years following an intervention both the share price and the operating performance of the target company improved, on average.
平均来看，干预之后的五年内，公司的股价和经营业绩均得到提高，
The operating performance got stronger towards the end of the five-year period, not weaker.
经营业绩在五年期结束时并没有下滑，反而是增长了。
This is the sort of evidence that has convinced Mary Jo White, the chairman ofAmerica's Securities and Exchange Commission,
正是这类证据说服了美国证券交易委员会主席玛丽·乔·怀特。
to argue in a recent speech that activist shareholders should no longer be automatically viewed negatively.
她在最近的一次演讲中提到，不能再这样不假思索得否定激进投资人了。
These days, she said, There is widespread acceptance of many of the policy changes that so-called ‘activists' are seeking to effect.
她说现在这些所谓‘激进者'所寻求的政策变化已有很多获得了广泛接受。
A recent article in the Columbia Law Review, The Agency Costs of Agency Capitalism:
《哥伦比亚法律评论》最近刊登了代理人资本主义的代理成本：
Activist Investors and the Revaluation of Governance Rights, argues that the activists have become a vital adjunct to the institutional investors who own most shares, and who are willing to respond to governance proposals but not to propose them.
激进投资人和管理权的重估一文。该文认为激进投资人已成为机构投资人的一个重要帮手。机构投资人拥有公司绝大多数股票，愿意就提出的治理方案作出回应，但不愿提出方案。
Activists have thus become governance intermediaries, who find underperforming firms and offer their managers and institutional shareholders concrete proposals for business strategy through mechanisms less drastic than takeovers.
因此激进投资人成了治理中间人，找出业绩不好的公司，并为其管理者和机构投资人通过比收购更温和的机制提供公司战略方面的具体建议。
So it is crucial, the authors argue, to pass reforms that help the activists do their job.
因此，该文作者认为，当务之急是通过改革，助激进投资人一臂之力。
Mr Lipton and others are pressing for a rule change that would have the opposite effect, by obliging activists to disclose stakes at a lower threshold and more quickly.
而现在利普顿和一些人推动的规则改革则会起到相反的效果，它降低了激进投资人强制性披露持股比例的门槛。
That would force them to show their hand before they had built a big enough stake to make a decent profit if and when their proposals succeeded.
若要在提议成功之后获得丰厚收益，激进投资人必须先增持一定数量的股票。但这一规则变更将迫使他们过早摊牌。
Boards have an obvious motive to back curbs on troublesome activists.
董事会显然欲约束这些麻烦的激进分子。
But a better strategy—and one that big firms are increasingly adopting—is to talk to them, consider their ideas and even invite them or their representatives to become directors, as firms from Microsoft to Mondelez have done.
然而更好的、也是大公司越来越倾向于选择的策略，是与他们交谈，考虑他们的意见甚至邀请他们或其代表加入董事会；微软和亿滋就是这么做的。
If a board's strategy is in fact better than that proposed by the activist, having the debate in public may strengthen the incumbent management, as happened when activists took on firms such as AOL, Target and Clorox.
如果董事会的策略确实好于激进投资人提出的，公开就此进行辩论也可能巩固现任管理层的地位。美国在线、塔吉特百货和高乐氏在应对激进投资人挑战时就是如此。
Indra Nooyi, the boss of PepsiCo, chose to work with Ralph Whitworth, a veteran activist who took a stake in the company.
百事可乐总裁英德拉·诺伊选择了和资深激进投资人、拥有百事可乐股票的拉尔夫惠特沃思合作。
By doing so she was able to head off calls for a break-up of the firm, while still boosting its shares, thereby restoring her authority.
这样她既平息了要求拆分公司的呼声，又推高了公司股价，由此在公司重树威信。
Mr Donohoe's encounter with Mr Icahn may prove less nightmarish if he treats his ideas about eBay on their merits rather than dismissing them out of hand.
如果多诺霍能中肯得看待伊坎对易趣的建议，而不是不假思索的否定，也许结果就不会那么糟糕了。
1.continue to 继续
One-off projects will continue to attract capital.
一次性的项目会继续吸引资本。
U.s. natural-gas producers continue to increase supply.
美国天然气供应商的供给持续增加。
2.call for 需要；要求
A few relatively infrequent situations also call for a semicolon.
有几个比较少见的的情况也要求使用分号。
Finally, higher food prices will call for tighter monetary policy.
最后，食品价格上涨会要求各国收紧货币政策。
3.want to 想要
Want to beat climate change?
想战胜气候变化吗？
They want to enjoy something.
他们想获得一些享受。
4.talk to 谈话；责骂
Talk to three or four of your classmates.
和你的三个或四个同学交谈。
Maybe you could talk to her?
你和她谈谈是不是更好？ |