Defence is mostly done before there is anything to defend against.

The work

Three pieces, in order.

• Ownership analysis. Who actually holds the register, how concentrated it is, which holders have historically supported activist campaigns, and where the swing votes sit.
• Vulnerability assessment. The arguments an activist would make, built from the outside in, without the benefit of management's explanations.
• Engagement plan. What the board says, to whom, and in what order, before a campaign becomes public rather than after.

Why this one

Activism defence is the clearest case I have found of finance and strategy being the same discipline. The activist thesis is a valuation argument. The response is a governance and communications problem. Neither half works without the other, and the analysis has to be honest about the parts of the critique that land.

It is also the work that pulled me from quantitative finance toward advisory. The modelling is a means to an end. The end is a board deciding what to do.

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