. >> reporter: mike olman stabilized j.c. penney's financial situation, keeping the ship afloat. moving that vessel forward is another issue. so when j.c. penney reports earnings a week from today, how the retailer plans to reinvigorate shoppers is the burning question. even more sew the closer the calendar moves to the important holiday season. for "nightly business report" i'm courtney regan. >> so are activist investors good for companies and shareholders? kate kelly joins us with a look at the impact some investors have on companies. kate, they make a lot of noise and headlines. who has a good track record and who doesn't? >> take david inhorn with a successful battle with apple, which we mentioned earlier in context with carl icahn. he won the battle and got what he wanted, however, the stock is not doing that well this year so his envestment is not up year to date. that's an example where you have a short-term victory but longer term investment play hebra life, since then the stock has gone up and benefits carl icahn and other people on the long side. it's often a mixed bag

we had mike olman lead a very successful turn around in this company.ly, a bad period in all retail in the late '90s as we had in all of our markets and things weren't looking so, but he's done a great turn around as ceo and then, of course, the financial crisis hit. then he brought it back. however, the board, you know, i think shove encouraged mike to stay on longer. they shoved a much more thoughtful succession here. if you talk to anybody below the surface at apple or frankly you talk to any am board member who is running the apple stores, who created the concept. who turned the table over? the genius, it was all steve jobs. they wrongly brought in ron johnson and your boy bill ackman is the guy responsible for tanking this process. >> my boy, i was slamming him off just as much as anybody else. >> they are taking on his case, brian. >> somebody had to take the other side, that's what it's all about. >> not really, sometimes you have right an wrong, truth is not always the middle course. sometimes somebody is wrong. ackman is wrong. >> we have other