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Source document· November 13, 2025

Activist investors make Wall Street 'efficient': Starboard CEO

View original at finance.yahoo.com
Activist investors make Wall Street 'efficient': Starboard CEO Starboard Value managing member, CEO, and chief investment officer Jeffrey Smith is among the most influential activist investors on Wall Street…
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  • Kimberly-Clark is further along than Kenvue in digital and newer marketing transitions

    80% confidence
  • Darden had better brands and assets than peers but worse margins and multiples when Starboard invested

    80% confidence
  • Starboard Value oversees more than $9 billion today

    80% confidence
  • The Kimberly-Clark and Kenvue organizational structures overlap beautifully with similar geographic P&L structures

    80% confidence
  • Kenvue has the best brands in consumer health but had lower margins, growth rate, and multiples than peers

    80% confidence
  • Starboard Value was a $3 billion hedge fund when it moved on Darden in December 2013

    80% confidence
  • Salesforce's rule of 40 score has improved materially since Starboard's engagement

    80% confidence
  • Dealing with COVID was massively stressful for portfolio management and overall operations

    80% confidence
  • Activism is going to make the overall market more efficient

    80% confidence
  • The complete board replacement at Darden was the only time it's ever been done for a Fortune 500 company and won't be done again

    80% confidence
  • The biggest impact of activism is lighting a fire under management teams to do more faster than they would have otherwise

    80% confidence
  • Salesforce is going to be an AI beneficiary and is still focused on profit margins

    80% confidence
  • There is no big change in brand trust affecting Tylenol sales despite autism concerns

    80% confidence
  • The Kenvue management team may not be best suited to create value after the J&J spinoff

    80% confidence
  • The fit between Kimberly Clark and Kenvue is probably better than people think

    80% confidence
  • Corporate America has been more active than before Starboard started, making changes faster due to activism

    80% confidence
What we know · the intelligence behind this page
Live from the substrate
What we're seeing
AI Funding Surge: Capital Floods Fintech, Foundation Models, and Autonomous Systems
A concentrated burst of AI-linked funding on 2026-08-28 pushed well over $1.5B into companies spanning fraud/identity fintech (Socure, which also acquired Fravity), foundation models (Stability AI), AI agents and enterprise tooling (Instinct, Generalist AI, Emerald AI, Owner), and AI-adjacent autonomous/aerospace ventures (Gatik, Regent Craft). The breadth and simultaneity of these rounds signal that investor appetite for AI is not concentrated in a single vertical but is broadening into applied and infrastructure-adjacent domains, with consolidation (Socure-Fravity) beginning alongside fresh capital formation.
Our read on the data ›
Signals we're tracking
EPKINLY Regulatory-Clinical Success Cascade
High probability of expanded label indications, additional combination approvals, and competitive positioning strength in follicular lymphoma market. Predicts positive commercial uptake and potential accelerated review for related indications.
Patterns we're watching ›
Where sources disagree
Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC
The same metric (eps) for the same entity (Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC) reported for the identical fiscal period (Q1 2026) and observation date (2026-03-31) has two conflicting values: 3.43 USD_per_share vs 3.08 USD. This is not a temporal change — both observations claim to measure the same point in time. The ~10% discrepancy (0.35 USD difference) is material for a financial metric.
We flag conflicts openly ›
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