Why do board members react to this with rejection? Basically, both have the same goal.
That’s right: you want the company’s value to increase. Only when it comes to the question of how this should be done do opinions sometimes differ. The area of tension often arises because the board of directors, the supervisory board and investors define the long term differently. The activist fund likes to talk about a long term of three years. The Supervisory Board and Management Board have every right to base their long-term strategy on five years or more. As a result, the priorities of the board are sometimes different than those of activist investors. There is no right or wrong.
So enemies of the company or the board are not activist investors?
I don’t see activist investors as either locusts or enemies for companies. They are much more challengers. They provide food for thought and are always well prepared with their investment hypotheses. The activists only become penetrative if you don’t deal with the demands, don’t take them seriously or react to them in the wrong way.