Meagan Reda Quoted in Bloomberg Law on the Robust Year for Shareholder Activism

Olshan Shareholder Activism partner Meagan Reda was recently quoted in a Bloomberg Law article (subscription required) on the robust year for shareholder activism in 2023, with 823 new campaigns launched last year, a 24% increase from the 665 campaigns in 2022, and Olshan leading as the top firm representing activists in 2023. Despite the widely held belief that the SEC’s new universal proxy card rules, effective as of September 2022, would reduce the cost of launching proxy contests, Meagan contended that they have actually caused the cost of launching a campaign to “substantially increase.” She explained that some companies used the new universal proxy rules as a pretext to amend their bylaws so they could “adopt extremely egregious, unreasonable and onerous bylaw amendments, making it substantially more difficult, time-consuming, and costly to run a proxy contest.” She added that the bylaw amendments “will continue to impact the 2024 proxy season and beyond.”