神秘的私人公司控制着美国公司

投票还有13天，但米克·麦奎尔知道他会输。麦奎尔在2010年创办自己的公司之前，先是从比尔·阿克曼（Bill Ackman）的激进对冲基金潘兴广场资本管理公司（Pershing Square Capital Management）起步，他是在后金融危机牛市期间大肆炒作的最激进的股东积极分子之一。在7年多一点的时间里，他已经在22家公司持有维权人士的股份。去年，他与其中两人展开了代理权之争，即围绕董事会席位的激烈争夺，这些席位可能会改变一家公司的未来。

But on December 1 he got some horrible news: Institutional Shareholder Services, the privately owned proxy adviser whose recommendations can make or break a deal, released its much-anticipated report. Over 33 pages, ISS advised investors in Ugg boot-maker Deckers Outdoor Corp. — where McGuire had acquired an 8.4 percent stake — to vote for the board of directors recommended by the company’s management and not the hedge fund’s.

几个月来，麦奎尔的马卡托资本管理公司一直在与这家加州公司进行代理权争夺战，甚至起诉德克斯推迟股东大会。马卡托最初提出了一个10人的董事名单，希望在定于12月14日召开的股东大会上推翻德克斯的整个董事会。这个计划雄心勃勃，甚至大胆。

对国际空间站来说，这还不够好。国际空间站赞同马尔卡托的三位董事的提议，尽管它建议投票表决管理层名单，但它写道，马尔卡托“无法满足国际空间站框架的要求。包括可能改变董事会控制权。”

“What happened with Marcato at Deckers — you could call it a ‘swing for the fences’ approach,” says Cristiano Guerra, the new head of special situations research at ISS, an earnest man heading an eight-analyst team whose tiny size belies the power its words wield over billion-dollar companies, as well as the hedge fund activists who often put billions of dollars on the line to change them.

因此，在12月4日，麦奎尔采取了一个非常不寻常的步骤。正如国际空间站所希望的那样，他将提名名单缩减为三位。两天后，在另一个罕见的举动中，国际空间站将其建议改为投票支持马尔卡托的提名。但麦奎尔最后一分钟的策略是徒劳的。由于已经投了很多票，他输了。



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米克·麦奎尔的失败这是不寻常的一年中的最新一次，10家市值超过10亿美元的公司与强大的活动家发生了代理权之争。这些高调的战斗使国际空间站对美国企业和激进股东的权力成为焦点，麦奎尔愿意公开向国际空间站鞠躬，试图挽救他的代理人竞选活动表明了这一点。

国际空间站的特别顾问兼战略研究和分析主管帕特里克·麦格恩（Patrick McGurn）解释说：“这些名牌蓝筹股公司正成为活动人士的攻击目标。“长期以来的论调是，高市值要么是一种威慑，要么是对任何形式的收购或激进主义活动的彻底防御。近年来，事实证明这是不真实的。”

2017年，数十亿美元的代理权之争上升，恰逢格拉在国际空间站（ISS）占据优势——据一名活动人士称，在一年的激烈冲突中，他“试图找到自己的海上腿”。Guerra在国际空间站做了近十年的分析师，他估计在过去两年中，国际空间站有40%的时间推荐管理层名单，高于过去的33%，有利于公司的比例略有增加。（从历史上看，ISS倾向于站在试图提振股价的积极分子一边，这并不奇怪，因为机构投资者是ISS的主要客户。）亚博赞助欧冠

格拉说，国际空间站正在寻找“最不具侵入性的解决方案”。现在说这是一种趋势可能还为时过早，但在他的监督下，国际空间站三次采取了不同寻常的步骤，即推荐管理层名单，同时建议投资者保留投票权，让一定数量的维权候选人获得董事会席位。几位资深投资者和顾问表示，这与国际空间站过去的做法有所不同，国际空间站过去通常会建议在此类分拆决定上采用激进派名单。最后，国际空间站的建议是一个二元选择，在最近的这些案例中，它选择了管理层。一位国际空间站（ISS）前高管表示：“你认为自己在分裂孩子，但你真正做的是支持公司。”。

随着持股比例的提高，企业在与激进分子打交道方面变得更加精明，并正通过聘请一大批顾问来为这场战斗做准备，这些顾问告诉企业倾听股东的担忧，而不是拖延时间或诉诸法庭，并为如果代理权竞争开始，企业将面临的国际空间站质询做好准备。或许公司正在学习，因为潮流已经稍微转向有利于管理层的方向。ISS的最新数据显示，截至2017年年中，投资者只赢得了50%的战斗，低于2013-2014年的67%。

Deckers was at the low end of last year’s big deals, with a market value of $2.8 billion. In the biggest and most contentious proxy battle ever, an ISS recommendation for activist Nelson Peltz, a founding partner of Trian Partners, helped him win his brutal bid for a single board seat at Procter & Gamble, the consumer products company. With a $225 billion market cap, P&G is the biggest company to tangle with an activist. Peltz had another advantage: He hired Guerra’s former boss at ISS, Chris Cernich, the former head of its prestigious research unit, as an adviser, and after three recounts that went back and forth, lost by a tiny margin — but still nabbed a board seat.

ISS已经成为亿万富翁对冲基金活动家和他们数十亿美元的公司猎物之间的代理权争夺的王者，这更令人吃惊，因为ISS本身的价值不到10亿美元，而且一开始只是一个后台支持系统，帮助股东投票表决公司治理中通常很平常的事情。一位现在在对冲基金工作的前国际空间站高管说：“国际空间站有点误入了这个强大的角色。”

Hints that the 33-year-old Rockville, Maryland, company would come to dominate contested situations were first dropped during the heated early-aught merger of Compaq and Hewlett-Packard. ISS came out in favor of the transaction, which passed by a slim margin. Several months later the head of the research division, Ram Kumar, who had written the recommendation, was forced to resign following revelations that he had lied about having a law degree.

“People pressing the button had no credibility to inform the marketplace,” says a former ISS executive. “It was a watershed moment.”

或者至少是一个叫醒电话。“回顾惠普康柏的经验，我们的客户真的要求我们比以前做得更多，研究一些战略匹配问题，深入研究数字，就估值而言。它真的驱使我们想出了一个独立的小组，基本上什么也不做，只是看看这些高度有争议的情况，”麦格恩说，他自1996年以来一直在国际空间站工作。

2004年，ISS聘请的克里斯托弗杨，前兼并与SULLIVAN＆CROMWELL的律师曾在贝尔斯登成为技术银行家，监督努力并将Gravitas加入其建议。“我有一个空白的板岩，”留下2010年离开的年轻人，现在在瑞士信贷中的并购委员会的收购防御实践领先。他创建了一个带有专用团队的高级研究产品，放置了哪个Iss Iss呼叫“框架”来分析任何交易，以及一个面试双方的系统，其目标是成为中立仲裁者。在一个代理比赛中，活动家 - 谁称之为“持不同意见” - 将首先是，该公司之后就是这样做的。每一方都会得到大约90分钟的案例，而活跃主义者然后有机会反驳。

国际空间站的新团队，最初被称为并购边缘，时机是偶然的。阿克曼刚刚创办了潘兴广场，卡尔·伊坎刚刚更名为股东维权人士，佩尔茨创办了Trian Partners。佩尔茨将为这个新组织提供首批重大考验之一：2006年，他在H.J.海因茨（H.J.Heinz）发起了一场代理人之战，并获得了国际空间站（ISS）的支持。他最终获得了两个董事会席位。

此后，国际空间站就代理权之争提出了大约250条建议。据proxy Monitor在2012年的一份报告显示，该公司的市场份额估计占主导地位，占代理业务的61%，不过市场人士认为这一比例更高。ISS的主要竞争对手是Glass Lewis&Co.，这是安大略省教师养老金计划和艾伯塔省投资管理公司的投资组合公司，成立于2003年，被广泛认为是为了增加该领域的竞争，对抗ISS的影响。格拉斯·刘易斯拒绝置评。

Over the years ISS has passed through many hands. The company, an idea that came from the Investor Responsibility Research Center and pioneer corporate governance advocate Robert Monks, was launched in 1985. It has since been owned by Thomson Financial, followed by an investor group led by Warburg Pincus, then MSCI, which sold the unit to Vestar Capital Partners, a New York–based private-equity group, for $364 million in 2014. Last fall, Vestar sold ISS to Genstar Capital, a San Francisco–based private-equity group that focuses on middle-market companies, for $720 million. Genstar says the company’s management will remain the same and that ISS will continue to operate independently.

ISS的前身是华盛顿郊区一个沉睡的办公园区，对面是一家7-11便利店，现在它在全球拥有1000名员工、19个办事处和1700名机构投资者客户，并在117个市场提供广泛的公司治理服务。它还有一个分支，为那些与著名的代理研究机构隔着一堵中国墙的公司提供建议。为了避免潜在的冲突，ISS的研究人员从未被告知他们正在分析的公司是否是公司客户，尽管ISS的投资者客户可以打亚博赞助欧冠电话给ISS查询。

Historically, “the business operations were really centered around our traditional proxy advisory services . . . sort of soup to nuts on any issues that come up on the agenda at public companies,” says McGurn. That could mean voting on everything from executive pay to bylaws. ISS estimates it executes about 8.5 million proxy ballots annually — the vast majority of them noncontroversial.

The back-office function of casting proxy ballots for its institutional investor clients became ISS’s bread and butter, dating from the days when votes were checked off on paper and mailed to ISS. “The biggest part of our operation back then was the mailroom. Believe it or not, we had our own ZIP code, with four extra digits there. And every day, literally carts of mail would be wheeled into the basement of our building. And we had a huge group of people that just sorted and went through that,” recalls McGurn.

在董事会席位的并购交易或活动代理比赛中，董事会席位的成果，是ISS的一小部分，是ISS - 1,000名员工的一小部分，包括特殊情况研究组。毫无疑问，因为有争议的情况很少见 - 估计不到总会议总会议的一半。然而，该群体是哪一个前ISS执行官称该组织的“心跳”。

这也是最有争议的。多年来，企业一直抱怨国际空间站，认为它通常站在激进分子一边。“美国的每一家公司都痛恨国际空间站，”一位参与过维权斗争的律师说。

It’s understandable that corporate chieftains don’t like the situation ISS puts them in. “You’re told that your future and your legacy depend on this tiny little office in Rockville, Maryland, and that you’ll sit there for 90 minutes while they pass judgment on you,” says one corporate adviser.

Cernich,领导国际空间站代理研究军n for six years after Young left in 2010, recalls uneasy encounters with CEOs. “I used to strap on body armor before panels and public events . . . because the advisers spent so much effort telling their corporate clients how evil I was,” he jokes. “It’s not just ISS, though. A fellow panelist from a large institutional investor once told me at a director conference she wondered if she should be getting hazardous duty pay for what she was about to go through.”

对Young和Cernich来说，在国际空间站（ISS）管理代理研究部门是为公司提供更有利可图的职业咨询的坚实起步平台——在许多方面与前检察官成为高薪辩护律师一样，为他们曾经被送进监狱的客户辩护。

Last year Cernich started his own corporate advisory firm, Strategic Governance Advisors, which is an affiliate of Sard Verbinnen & Co., the M&A public relations firm. Cernich was an adviser on two of 2017’s most high-profile contests. In addition to working for Peltz in his battle with P&G, he also counseled ADP, the human resources software company, as it fended off Ackman’s Pershing Square.

Cernich的公司是传统投资银行和律师事务所辩护业务之外的公司顾问家庭手工业的一部分。这一新品种在很大程度上是为了应对投资者的普遍担忧，特别是国际空间站。

一个更为成熟的参与者是坎伯维尤合伙人（carbeview Partners），其首席执行官安倍•弗里德曼（Abe Friedman）曾是贝莱德（BlackRock）公司治理和负责任投资的全球负责人，2012年离职创办坎伯维尤。

坎伯维尤的部分工作是为国际空间站的客户做准备。“积极分子比公司有更多的射门机会，因为他们参与了更多的运动。你有一个小时或90分钟的时间来陈述你的观点。这是一个艰难的环境，这就是为什么公司在这次会议上取得成功是如此重要，”德里克·扎巴说，他是前活动家，现在是坎伯维尤的合伙人。“当我们准备让客户与ISS接洽时，我们建议他们在与投资者交谈之后再与ISS接洽，”这是因为ISS提出的一个主要问题总是“你的其他股东怎么看？他说。

ISS’s historic support for activists could be one reason why corporations are trying to convince Washington to rein it in. Last year, new legislation to regulate proxy advisers was introduced in the House by Representative Sean Patrick Duffy, a Republican from Wisconsin.

The legislation “would grant ‘companies,’ apparently meaning corporate management, the right to review the proxy advisory firms’ research reports before the paying customers — investors — receive the reports,” the Council of Institutional Investors said in a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi opposing the legislation. Proxy advisers would also be forced to hire an ombudsman to resolve a corporation’s complaints, and publish company management’s dissenting statements. In part because of the tight timeline during proxy season for many of the contested cases, it wrote, “the provisions are not practical.”

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Companies may complain关于国际空间站的力量。但是，最依赖国际空间站建议的是活动家，而不是他们所针对的公司——而且，毫不奇怪，一些人对国际空间站政策和过去模式的变化感到不安，这些变化对他们不利。

A recommendation from ISS does not guarantee an activist win, but it’s virtually impossible for an activist to win without the recommendation of ISS, say former and current ISS executives, activists, and other market participants. That said, many institutional investors like to say that the power of ISS is overstated, that it is merely reflecting the desires of its biggest clients — like BlackRock, Vanguard Group, State Street Corp., and others — who control the biggest stakes in most large corporations.

“如果国际空间站倾向于站在激进分子一边，这是有充分理由的，”一位国际空间站前高管说。“ISS不是一个公共机构。这是一家私人盈利性公司，他们试图取悦客户。他们正在发布他们希望得到客户好评的建议。他们写这份报告不是为了社会的利益。他们是为付钱给他们的客户写的。”

One activist attorney goes so far as to say that ISS has solved the “shareholder collective-action problem.” By letting ISS be the quasi-judge, “it avoids shareholders being a group and busting a poison pill or having to file a 13D,” he says.

正如加州教师退休制度公司治理负责人安妮·希恩（Anne Sheehan）所说，“当人们指责ISS时，实际上是在指责我。”即便如此，她补充道，“我们经常不投他们的票。但对于像CalSTRS这样拥有8000家公司的大型机构投资者来说，ISS提供了一个有价值的研究工具。她说：“事实上他们很少是错的。”。如果有分歧，“通常是解释的问题。”亚博赞助欧冠

也有人说，ISS实际上是机构投资者的挡箭牌，作为长期投资者，机构投资者可能不想直接告诉公司亚博赞助欧冠他们私下会对ISS说些什么。这些客户毫不避讳地告诉ISS他们对维权运动或被围困公司的看法，对冲基金也不避讳。Guerra说，ISS也愿意听取那些不是其客户的人的意见，特别是如果他们是一家卷入代理权之争的公司的大投资者的话。

The big institutional investors like CalSTRS, BlackRock, and Vanguard have developed their own research capabilities in recent years and say they don’t automatically vote the ISS recommendation. But some smaller funds do rely on ISS.

此外,至少有一些retail investors with accounts at the big brokers like Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley Wealth Management are automatically voting the ISS recommendation.

这些散户投资者在最近的许多选举中都变得非常重要，包括保罗·辛格（Paul Singer）与铝制造商Arconic的争斗、佩尔茨（Peltz）与宝洁（P&G）的争斗以及阿克曼（Ackman）与ADP的争斗。正如阿克曼在那次竞选中所承认的那样，“根据国际空间站的建议，相当一部分ADP股票是自动投票的。”

考虑到国际空间站对激进分子的重要性，他们密切关注那里的卫兵更迭也就不足为奇了。格拉手下有7人，他从以前的同事那里得到了高分。“事实上，他很难阅读专业是故意的，是什么让他在这个角色上很好的一部分，”塞尔尼奇说。他补充说，Guerra在加入国际空间站之前，多年从事分析师和运营主管的工作是额外的好处。“在那些会议上，他没有和任何人谈判。他试图找到客户可以信赖的答案。”

不过，ISS虽然是注册投资顾问，但基本上是自我监管的。它谈论的是在一个框架下运作，但这主要被定义为以下两个核心问题：“持不同政见者是否提出了一个令人信服的理由，认为变革是必要的？如果是的话，哪些提名者最有可能推动这一变化？“除了国际空间站不允许参与者提前审查自己的决定，只会在做出决定时考虑公共信息外，没有什么规定。在激烈的代理权之争中，这一点并不无关紧要，因为在激烈的代理权之争中，大量的个人谩骂和错误信息四处传播。在其报告中，国际空间站经常说，它忽视了所有这些，而把重点放在了事实上。但由于它做出的判断可能会在财务和其他方面产生重大后果，因此它仍然受到所有人的批评。最大的问题之一是：人们希望有更多的时间来陈述自己的观点。

“ISS should be more open to follow-up discussions before they issue their report. We wish we’d had a chance to talk with them again,” says one activist who ended up settling with the company instead of going to a full vote.

考虑到他们对国际空间站善意的依赖，大多数人不愿公开讲话，因为他们害怕激怒国际空间站。但这并没有阻止阿克曼写信给国际空间站后，它未能支持他的三个董事名单在他与ADP的战斗。

在Marcato Deckers之争发生前不到一个月，Ackman在ADP的代理权争夺战收到了一份类似但不常见的意见分歧建议，要求投资者投票管理层的名单，同时建议Ackman可以通过拒绝投票给管理层候选人来获得董事会席位。没用，阿克曼输了。

Ackman was baffled when ISS did not give Pershing Square a chance to counter management’s claims — as he says was ISS’s “customary practice.” In a letter to ISS, he wrote: “In the course of all of our activist engagements over more than a decade, ISS has always offered us an opportunity to participate in an extensive and productive dialogue. This is the first time in our experience that ISS’s approach has varied from its established precedent and rules of engagement where we were not offered the opportunity to address new facts or issues raised by the subject company subsequent to our meeting with ISS in the midst of a proxy contest.”

ISS claims it has always reserved the right to contact both parties in a proxy contest if it deems it necessary, but has made no promise to that effect. Yet others agree with Ackman that more limited engagements appear to be a change in practice. When Young and Cernich were in charge, says one activist attorney, “there was a constant flow of information back and forth. They were the only people besides the chief justice of the Delaware Supreme Court [where many shareholder disputes are adjudicated] who had my direct line.”

More seriously, Ackman also claimed that, based on the comments made in its report, ISS relied on “nonpublic, inaccurate, and misleading information, claims, and arguments” to make its decision not to endorse his director slate.

ADP和ISS都强烈否认阿克曼的指控。“我们只使用公开信息，句号，”格拉说。“每次我们与公司和活动人士开会或打电话时，我们在说‘谢谢你接电话’之后的第一句话就是，‘不要给我们任何实质性的非公开信息’。”当然，这并不意味着参与者会遵守。

格拉并没有对阿克曼的指控负责。他说：“我仍然相信，让比尔·阿克曼加入董事会是正确的答案。”。然而，代理权竞争的赢家通吃性质和国际空间站对管理层名单的建议，只对一名候选人进行简单的“扣压”，意味着阿克曼几乎不可能得到一名候选人。

That’s one reason why Guerra wants investors to look beyond the ISS recommendations. “It’s important for our clients to read the report and understand how we got to where we got, as opposed to just saying, ‘Well, it’s just a one-liner for or against,’ because these are never black-and-white situations,” he says. “You’re talking about much bigger companies, much more high-profile contests. You’re dealing with issues that are perhaps more nuanced. A lot of these [recent cases] were operational contests where it’s not just, ‘Hey, put the company up for sale.’ It’s not a simplified argument.”

Such complex fights among antagonists with billions of dollars on the line are likely to continue to test Guerra and ISS. “Our primary focus is maintaining a neutral and independent voice in the process,” he says.

很少有人怀疑他的诚意——但这还不够。这场斗争可能不是黑白的，但代理投票的性质意味着结果仍然是二元的。当他们继续愤怒的时候——激进分子筹集了更多的钱，公司在防御上变得更加狡猾——一小群人坐在马里兰州一个绿树成荫的郊区的一个办公公园里，他们将继续控制这些公司冲突的命运。正如格拉自己所说，“你必须考虑意外的后果。”

图片来源：图1：贾斯汀·梅茨的插图；图2：国际空间站在马里兰州洛克维尔的办公室。埃德约翰逊摄；图3：国际空间站支持管理层后，比尔·阿克曼失去了与ADP的代理权之争。