The standard dividend discount model assumes an infinite stream of dividends, but many stocks disappear through merger at a premium at some point in their corporate life, with a current takeover probability of about 0.5% to 2% per year for publicly-traded firms in the U.S. Ignoring takeover...

Up to the late 1990s, there was little evidence that shareholder activism generated any economically meaningful improvements in share prices or the operating performance of corporations. By the early 2000s, however, a new form of shareholder activism began to emerge: shareholder activism by...