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4/1/2026

Elliott Says Mitsui OSK’s Medium-term Plan Does Not Go ‘Far Enough’

Investing.com (04/01/26) Warrick, Ambar

Elliott Investment Management said on Wednesday that Japanese shipping giant Mitsui O.S.K. Lines’ (TYO:9104) new medium-term management plan did not go “far enough” in providing shareholder returns, especially in comparison to its peers. The investor said in a statement that the initiatives outlined by Mitsui in its medium-term management plan (MTMP) were positive steps towards improving shareholder returns and increasing capital efficiency. “Elliott remains concerned that the MTMP does not go far enough in closing Mitsui O.S.K.’s significant gap in shareholder returns to its peers or concretely addressing the large unrealized gains from vessels and real estate on the Company’s balance sheet,” the investor said. “Mitsui O.S.K. must more ambitiously confront the factors behind its deep undervaluation.” Shares of the shipping line fell 1.3% on Wednesday. The company recently released a “phase 2” of its Blue Action 2035 transformation plan aimed at shifting focus towards “value realization” in the next four years. Elliott had in March disclosed a “significant” stake in Mitsui, stating that the stock was materially undervalued despite its strong business and high-quality assets.

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4/1/2026

New BP CEO Meg O'Neill Starts Off by Promising Consistency, Staff Note Shows

Reuters (04/01/26) Kelly, Stephanie; Nasralla, Shadia

BP's (BP.L) new CEO Meg O'Neill began her stint on Wednesday by offering consistency while accelerating the group's performance, a year after the company pivoted its strategy firmly back to oil and gas, according to a staff note seen by Reuters. O'Neill is BP's fourth CEO since 2020 and its first external hire for the role in more than a century. She is the first woman to lead a top-five oil major. Formerly of Australia's Woodside Energy (WDS.AX) and Exxon Mobil (XOM.N), O'Neill arrives as BP seeks to move away from an ill-fated foray into renewables. "I believe we can safely accelerate performance and drive innovation, sustainability and growth," she said in the note to employees. "I'm committed to providing clear direction and consistency so we can move forward together with confidence." She joins new chairman Albert Manifold, who took up the role in October and has underscored the need to further reshape BP's portfolio to boost profitability. Elliott Investment Management, one of BP's largest shareholders, has called on Manifold to address what it has called the company's shortcomings. Manifold recently announced a leaner board, with former Shell finance chief Simon Henry among those departing, saying fewer directors would allow for faster decision-making and sharper oversight as part of BP's reset. BP has cut billions of dollars from planned renewable energy projects, pledged to divest $20 billion of assets by 2027, and to reduce debt and costs. Net debt fell to $22 billion from $26 billion in the fourth quarter last year, and BP reiterated its target range of $14 billion-$18 billion by end-2027. The company suspended share buybacks in February to focus on cutting debt and refocusing investment on oil and gas projects.

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3/31/2026

OraSure Defends Strategy Amid Altai Governance Challenge

TipRanks (03/31/26)

OraSure Technologies (NASDAQ: OSUR) released a presentation defending its performance and governance in response to Altai Capital’s push to replace two independent directors, highlighting that its shareholder returns have matched or exceeded a selected diagnostics peer set during CEO Carrie Eglinton Manner’s tenure. The company emphasized a focused growth strategy built on stabilizing public health funding, new products such as Colli-Pee and the Sherlock CT/NG self-test, and a path to operating cash flow breakeven in 2026, arguing that Altai undervalues its M&A pipeline and that a sale process now would jeopardize value from pending FDA decisions and ongoing margin expansion. OraSure detailed cost-cutting and operational restructuring since 2023, including site closures, workforce reductions of about 40%, and automation that has lifted gross margins and reduced SG&A, creating operating leverage as volumes recover. Management also pointed to disciplined capital allocation, a debt-free balance sheet with substantial cash, share repurchases at prices below Altai’s valuation range, and equity-heavy executive and director compensation as evidence of alignment with shareholders, while questioning Altai’s analysis and the track record of its principal, Rishi Bajaj.

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3/31/2026

Palliser Engages MSG Maker Ajinomoto in AI Hunt

Bloomberg (03/31/26) French, Alice

Palliser Capital has expanded its hunt for overlooked AI beneficiaries in Japan with a stake in seasoning maker Ajinomoto Co. (TYO: 2802), according to people familiar with the matter. Palliser has built a position in Ajinomoto within the past six months and is lobbying for the firm to raise prices for its chip insulation products, the people said, asking not to be named as the information is private. Palliser is now among Ajinomoto’s top 25 shareholders, they said. The fund is calling for a more than 30% increase in prices for Ajinomoto Build-Up Film (ABF), according to a document seen by Bloomberg. ABF is used to package high-performance semiconductors, and Palliser believes Ajinomoto is missing out on substantial share price upside from the AI infrastructure buildout, the document shows. The investment is part of Palliser’s move to identify lesser-known winners from the ongoing artificial intelligence boom. It follows the fund’s recent stake in toilet maker Toto Ltd. (TYO: 5332), where it is calling for more disclosure around the company’s chip parts business. Ajinomoto holds more than 90% of global market share for insulating materials used in PCs and data center servers, according to its website. Palliser is urging the company to establish the ABF business as a standalone segment to raise awareness of its strength, according to the people. Ajinomoto shares have gained around 3% in the past six months, underperforming Japan’s benchmark Topix, which has risen almost 12%. In contrast, other chip material makers like Ibiden Co. (4062.T) and Resonac Holdings (4004.T) have rallied more than 60%. Ajinomoto, which is known for discovering MSG seasoning more than 100 years ago, brought its resin-based chip insulating films to market in 1999. Their origins lie in Ajinomoto’s command of MSG. Chlorinated paraffin, a byproduct of the MSG-making process, can be used to soften resin, according to the company’s website. ABF sales are rising due to AI demand and the business will “drive company-wide performance” in upcoming quarters, according to Ajinomoto’s February earnings presentation. The company opened a new facility to produce ABF products in Gunma, central Japan, in October. The ABF business currently falls under Ajinomoto’s “healthcare and others” segment, which accounted for around 29% of the company’s total business profit in the fiscal year ended March 2025.

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3/31/2026

Marmite Maker Unilever Creates Food Empire in $45 Billion Merger

City AM (03/31/26) Armstrong, Felix

Unilever (LON: ULVR, NYSE: UL) has sealed a $45 billion merger of its food brands with U.S. spice and seasoning giant McCormick (NYSE: MKC), forging a $60 billion food empire in which the London-based firm holds a majority stake. Unilever and its shareholders will own 65% in the new body, with the firm receiving $15.7 billion (£11.6 billion) in cash and the equivalent of $29.1 billion (£21.9 billion) McCormick shares. The merger marks the culmination of a telegraphed push from Unilever to shift away from its food brands, as new chief executive Fernando Fernandez bids to make his consumer juggernaut a “sharper and faster” company. Before the merger was confirmed, analysts had speculated that a straightforward sale would be unlikely because the financial profile of Unilever’s food arm dwarfs that of McCormick. London-based Unilever had been nearing a deal with McCormick since it confirmed talks earlier this month, in which it said its food brands comprise a “highly attractive” business with a “strong financial profile." Fernandez said: “For Unilever, this transaction is another decisive step in sharpening our portfolio and accelerating our strategy towards high-growth categories.” The new chief executive plans to save €800 million over three years and shed 7,500 jobs – including 200 managers as the new chief executive takes aim at “mediocrity” in the firm. Nelson Peltz has been pushing for Unilever to streamline its offering since taking a stake in 2022. Peltz, the founder of Trian Partners, has held a non-executive role on the FTSE 100 firm’s board since building out his stake four years ago. “Having slimmed down, Unilever will want to show it is fighting fit for the future and it will get its next opportunity to do so with next month’s first-quarter update,” Russ Mold, AJ Bell investment director, said. Brendan Foley, McCormick’s chief executive officer, said: “This combination will create a diversified flavor leader with a robust growth profile that remains differentiated by its focus on flavoring calories while others compete for them.” Earlier on Tuesday it emerged that Unilver had placed an immediate freeze on hiring as it braced for costs from the Iran war.

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3/31/2026

Irenic Said to Build Stake in Snap

Bloomberg (03/31/26) Baker, Liana

Irenic Capital Management has built a position in social media company Snap Inc. (NYSE: SNAP) and is pushing for changes to improve financial and operating performance, according to people familiar with the matter. The investor sent a letter to Snap Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Evan Spiegel, outlining its views it hopes could boost the company’s shares to more than $26 each, the people said, asking not to be identified because the matter is private. Irenic’s economic interest in Snap’s Class A shares is around 2.5%, the people added. Snap’s shares were trading at $4.13 per share at 10:01 a.m. in New York Tuesday, giving it a market value of almost $7 billion. The stock is down 50% this year. “We bought Snap because we think the social network you built is an extraordinarily valuable asset – whose strategic value is only increasing,” Irenic said in the letter, which was reviewed by Bloomberg News. Irenic recommends spinning off or shutting its smart glasses business Specs, which it argued, with $3.5 billion already sunk into it, should “be funded on its own” by now. Snap announced in January that it would create a standalone subsidiary dedicated to Specs. Michael Lynton, chairperson of Snap’s board responded in a statement that “Snap welcomes input from all shareholders and regularly engages with investors on strategy, capital allocation, and governance.” He added that the board and management “are focused on building a more efficient, profitable business while investing with discipline in our long-term roadmap.” He said the company has “taken steps to improve performance, strengthen free cash flow, and offset dilution, and will continue to evaluate actions that drive long-term value for all stockholders.” The hedge fund also proposes that Snap should rationalize its cost structure by cutting its workforce and changing its compensation structure for employees. “Like many of your peers you over-hired,” Irenic said. “Unlike your peers, you haven’t course corrected.” It also suggests doing a stock buyback since shares are so discounted. The company should focus on adopting artificial intelligence to improve ad monetization, pointing to dramatic improvements at Meta Platforms Inc. and AppLovin Corp. at boosting ad revenue. In November, Snap announced a stock buyback program of up to $500 million of its Class A shares. It also unveiled a $400 million partnership with Perplexity AI Inc. to incorporate its AI-powered search engine into Snapchat. As of the end of September, Snapchat had 943 million global monthly active users and daily active users were 477 million. Irenic was founded in 2021 by Adam Katz, who came from Elliott Investment Management, and Andy Dodge from Indaba Capital Management. It has been building out its private equity practice and hired E-Fei Wang from Apollo Global Management Inc., Bloomberg reported this month. The fund has experience running campaigns at controlled companies before and in recent years, pushed for changes at News Corp. (NASDAQ: NWSA), which is backed by the Murdoch family. For Snap, Katz, Dodge and Wang further ask for corporate governance changes and said Class A shareholders should be granted one vote per share. They noted that would only give the public a 36% voting share in the company, which they said was more in line with Meta and Alphabet Inc. Spiegel and his co-founder, Bobby Murphy, control Snap through a special voting class of shares. The company’s shares fell last week as European Union opened an investigation into its social network on how it verifies users’ age and tackles grooming and criminal activities targeting underage users. In February, its shares fell by the most in six months after the company reported a decline in daily users, partly driven by Australia’s ban on social media for children. Snap is also swept up in the national social media litigation in the US. While Snap settled just ahead of the first trial, the verdict against Meta and Google that came down last week is just the beginning in a longer line of similar cases against the three technology companies as well as TikTok. Founded in 2011 and having gone public in 2017, Snap has tried to find its footing as a public company over the years after it started as a disappearing messages company aimed at young people. It is now offering subscription products, planting its flag as a player in tech wearables and preparing to release its first consumer pair of augmented reality glasses later this year. “Snap should not continue doing what it has been doing,” Irenic said it its letter. “It’s not working.” “We have no doubt that your Second Act, saving Snap, the company, can be even more impressive than building Snap,” the investors said at the end of the letter.

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3/31/2026

LG Chem Shareholders Reject Activist Push, Back Management Strategy

Korea Bizwire (03/31/26)

Shareholders of LG Chem (KRX: 051910) on Tuesday rejected a slate of governance reforms proposed by the British investor Palliser Capital, siding instead with the company’s existing management structure. The proposals were voted down at the company’s annual general meeting, with opposition from the National Pension Service, LG Chem’s second-largest shareholder. The fund argued that the measures could encroach on the board’s authority and introduce unnecessary uncertainty. Palliser had called for a series of changes aimed at boosting shareholder value, including the introduction of advisory shareholder proposals, the appointment of a lead independent director and expanded monetization of LG Chem’s stake in its battery affiliate, LG Energy Solution (KRX: 373220). The fund also pushed for share buybacks, enhanced executive compensation tied to performance metrics and the adoption of financial indicators such as return on equity and net asset value discounts. The investor contended that LG Chem remained significantly undervalued, attributing the gap in part to the spin-off and dual listing of LG Energy Solution. Company executives, however, dismissed the proposals as overly broad and insufficiently structured, warning they could disrupt operations. The National Pension Service echoed those concerns, while noting that LG Chem has already outlined plans to unlock value from its stake in the battery unit. Shareholders separately approved the appointment of Kim Dong-choon, the company's recently named chief executive, as an inside director, consolidating leadership at a time of mounting industry pressures. Speaking at the meeting, Mr. Kim said the temporary shutdown of the company's No. 2 naphtha cracking center in Yeosu was driven by market conditions and would resume when demand recovers. He added that while LG Chem has secured naphtha supplies under U.S. sanctions exemptions, sourcing additional volumes has become more difficult amid escalating tensions in the Middle East. The outcome underscores the limits of shareholder activism in South Korea, where large institutional investors often prioritize stability over sweeping governance changes.

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3/31/2026

Palliser Capital Welcomes Majority-of-Minority Support for Proposals at LG Chem AGM

Yahoo! Finance (03/31/26)

Palliser Capital is encouraged by the outcome of LG Chem’s (KRX: 051910) Annual General Meeting today, at which Palliser’s proposals received robust support from the majority of LG Chem’s minority shareholders. This underscores unequivocal investor concerns relating to governance shortcomings and the Company’s capital allocation policy. While the voting influence of LG Corp (KRX: 003550) prevented Palliser’s resolutions from passing, the proposed resolutions to facilitate shareholder advisory proposals going forward and the appointment of a Lead Independent Director were supported by approximately 56% and 42%, respectively, of LG Chem’s independent minority shareholders. When excluding votes cast by the second-largest shareholder, the National Pension Service of Korea, minority shareholder support for these resolutions was even higher, with approximately 71% and 53% voting in favor, respectively. "This result represents a powerful signal from LG Chem’s minority shareholders," said James Smith, CIO at Palliser Capital. "A majority of independent investors voted in favor of change. This level of support underscores shareholders’ discontent with the status quo, including recent initiatives from the Company, as well as the growing expectation that LG Chem urgently reform its governance and capital management practices to take action on its deep valuation discount." "We encourage LG Chem’s Board and management, specifically the independent Chair, to engage constructively with shareholders and to respond meaningfully to the concerns expressed through this vote. Ignoring the voice of minority shareholders risks further eroding investor confidence." Palliser’s proposals were designed to enhance long-term shareholder value by strengthening accountability, improving transparency, and promoting better alignment between the interests of controlling and minority shareholders. Majority-of-minority support is widely recognized as a critical benchmark for assessing shareholder sentiment, particularly in companies with concentrated ownership structures. Palliser believes that today’s results should serve as a catalyst for LG Chem to take responsibility by adopting urgent measures to address the Company’s significant value gap, failing which shareholders will no doubt look to take the initiative with bolder measures necessary to further strengthen their rights. In the meantime, Palliser remains committed to continued dialogue with LG Chem and to advocating for governance reforms that support sustainable value creation for all shareholders.

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3/31/2026

Investor Artisan Partners Backs Unilever's Plan to Sell Food Unit

Reuters (03/31/26) Naidu, Richa

Artisan Partners, which has a history of driving strategic change at consumer companies, welcomed Unilever's (ULVR.L) decision on Tuesday to merge its food business with McCormick (MKC.N), saying the Dove soap maker should now be able to "more effectively manage" its core personal care and home brands. "The company will now more logically separate its interests in the food business and the personal care business," David Samra, managing director of Artisan Partners and founding partner of the International Value Group, told Reuters. He said the deal was also tax-efficient and had given shareholders "an attractive sale price." The merger will create a company worth around $65 billion in the second-largest food transaction in history after Kraft (NASDAQ: KHC) and Heinz's deal in 2015. Unilever's food unit is a high-margin business, but sales growth has lagged the company's personal goods and beauty businesses and weighed on its ambition to increase overall group sales by 4%-6% in the near term. Investor pressure on Unilever to shed food brands increased after it was revealed in 2022 that billionaire activist-shareholder Nelson Peltz had built a stake in the company. Peltz has been linked to the departure of former CEOs Alan Jope and Hein Schumacher, with Fernando Fernandez, Unilever's former finance chief and a veteran beauty and wellbeing executive, promoted to CEO to focus on streamlining the company's portfolio. Artisan has a $1.6 billion stake in Unilever, or 1.22% of the company's shares. It is the British company's ninth-largest investor, according to data from LSEG's Workspace. By comparison, Peltz, a Unilever board member, owns a $1.73 billion stake in the company as its seventh-biggest investor. "The remaining Unilever businesses operate in faster-growing and highly profitable categories and geographic markets," Samra said, adding: "On a standalone basis, these businesses should be able to command a higher earnings multiple." Other investors on Tuesday found the reality of the deal Unilever and McCormick struck hard to digest, perturbed by the transaction's structure, its long timeline to closing and the potential for antitrust scrutiny. Shares in Unilever, owner of Hellmann's mayonnaise and Knorr stock cubes, fell by 7% after the deal was announced, wiping $7 billion from its market value. McCormick, owner of Cholula hot sauce, also took a hit as its shares slid by about 5%. Artisan has in recent years advocated for change at several major global companies, from German pharmaceutical giant Bayer (OTCMKTS: BAYRY) to chocolate maker Barry Callebaut (BARN.SW). In early 2021, Artisan in an open letter called for change at Danone (DANO.PA), saying it had built a stake of more than 3% in the French food giant. About a month later, Danone's then-CEO and chairman, Emmanuel Faber, was ousted and its board overhauled. More recently, Artisan became the second-largest shareholder in Barry Callebaut with a roughly 10% stake.

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