it was written by robert maybery, he's an independent global business advisor. you are leading a forum this friday on this very topic--a global forum. and what is it that these activists want? > >bill, what they want is financial change. they don't agitate for control of organizations like private equity. what they want is to extract and insure greater value---financial value---off the balance sheet for the shareholder and most importantly in the short term for themselves. > >what's happening actually? > >we've seen an interesting change in the platform. those shareholder activists---mostly the hedge funds---have had success. particularly mr. ackman of pershing square capital had a great run at canadian pacific railway and less so recently at jc penney. the reason in my view is---i have enormous respect for bill ackman but what shareholder activists need to understand is there's a big difference about agitating for financial change and actually bringing about change in these iconic organizations. jc penney would have taken 5 years to bring about meaningful, long