Dear Chairman, Jeff Gramm
Dear Chairman, Jeff Gramm
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Dear Chairman
Boardroom Battles and the Rise of Shareholder Activism

Author: Jeff Gramm

Narrator: David Drummond

Unabridged: 10 hr 13 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 02/23/2016


Synopsis

A sharp and illuminating history of one of capitalism’s longest running tensions—the conflicts of interest among public company directors, managers, and shareholders—told through entertaining case studies and original letters from some of our most legendary and controversial investors and activists.Recent disputes between shareholders and major corporations, including Apple and DuPont, have made headlines. But the struggle between management and those who own stock has been going on for nearly a century. Mixing never-before-published and rare, original letters from Wall Street icons—including Benjamin Graham, Warren Buffett, Ross Perot, Carl Icahn, and Daniel Loeb—with masterful scholarship and professional insight, Dear Chairman traces the rise in shareholder activism from the 1920s to today, and provides an invaluable and unprecedented perspective on what it means to be a public company, including how they work and who is really in control.Jeff Gramm analyzes different eras and pivotal boardroom battles from the last century to understand the factors that have caused shareholders and management to collide. Throughout, he uses the letters to show how investors interact with directors and managers, how they think about their target companies, and how they plan to profit. Each is a fascinating example of capitalism at work told through the voices of its most colorful, influential participants.A hedge fund manager and an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School, Gramm has spent as much time evaluating CEOs and directors as he has trying to understand and value businesses. He has seen public companies that are poorly run, and some that willfully disenfranchise their shareholders. While he pays tribute to the ingenuity of public company investors, Gramm also exposes examples of shareholder activism at its very worst, when hedge funds engineer stealthy land-grabs at the expense of a company’s long term prospects. Ultimately, he provides a thorough, much-needed understanding of the public company/shareholder relationship for investors, managers, and everyone concerned with the future of capitalism.

About Jeff Gramm

Jeff Gramm runs a hedge fund and has served on several public company boards of directors. He is an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School, where he teaches value investing. Jeff lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and two children.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Justas on August 17, 2020

"If private equity does one thing well, it's governance. It's their money, they are not afraid to ask tough questions and to really understand the business and make the needed changes. Boards are notorious for waiting too long to rid of bad people. It's hard to pull the trigger on bad-performing CEO......more

Goodreads review by Grahamshircore on July 16, 2017

I thought at first that the additional commentary from Jeff which digresses quite a bit from each case study was a pain but I quickly realised that it added massively to my enjoyment and the usefulness of the book rather than detracting from it.......more

Goodreads review by Jack on June 02, 2020

This is great, would highly recommend to those who want to understand public company ownership. Gramm isn't as sharp as Matt Levine (Bloomberg) but there are some great insights here. I really enjoyed the history, Gramm's commentary, and the weird respect for good persuasive writing among the upper......more

Goodreads review by Héctor on June 26, 2022

The best book yet on the subject of Activist Investing.......more

Goodreads review by Library of on October 14, 2021

Well-written and highly interesting book. Below is my notes. Dear Chairman is about shareholder activism in the United States over the past century. The book is written by Columbia professor and fund manager Jeff Gramm and consists of eight studies based on investor letters, newspaper clippings and......more