News
Elliott Management has previously invested in Telecom Italia, where it had a profound effect on boardroom dynamics
Activist investor, Elliott Management, has taken a $3.2 billion stake in US telecoms giant, AT&T.
The US investment fund has a reputation for aggressively pursuing its own agenda at board level, most notably at Italian telco, Telecom Italia (TIM).
Elliott Management has been involved in a high-profile boardroom tussle at TIM where it has wrested control of the boardroom away from the company’s biggest shareholder, Vivendi, in a bid to optimise shareholder returns.
After taking the stake in AT&T Elliot Management issued a statement, urging AT&T to return to its core business operations, stating that a recent string of high-profile acquisitions had seen It erode its business focus and shareholder value.
“What has attracted our attention, as well as the attention of other shareholders – from large institutions to individual AT&T employees – has been the prolonged and substantial underperformance of AT&T as an investment relative to its potential,” Elliott wrote in a letter to AT&T.
“Over the past ten years, for example, AT&T – a “bellwether” in all senses of the word – has not only failed to keep pace with the broader market but has actually underperformed by over 150 percentage points.”
Also in the news:
Gavin Patterson returns to head up Salesforce in Europe and MENA
Everything as a Service – The next step in the evolution of the telco
Telenor and Axiata call off merger in Asia
