Nielsen And The WindAcre Partnership: A Nostalgic Tale Of A Corporate Raider And Private Equity White Knights

In the last several weeks, most of the attention in the corporate governance world has been focused on the drama playing out between Elon Musk and Twitter’s board of directors—especially the Twitter board’s decision to install a “poison pill” to prevent Musk from attempting a hostile takeover.

Poison pills evoke a bygone era of corporate raiders when activist investors got saddled with the reputation that they have today in some quarters, even though their business model has changed dramatically. Rather than being Viking-like corporate raiders (my wife and I are currently watching “The Last Kingdom” about King Alfred in the late 9^th century so this metaphor comes readily to mind), most activist investors now function as an important mechanism for ensuring corporate accountability on both financial and sustainability performance.