Other comments already explained what an activist investor is. It is adversarial...but that is the price to pay if you want to be a public company. If a compa

Other comments already explained what an activist investor is. It is adversarial...but that is the price to pay if you want to be a public company. If a company wants to raise capital from the public, they then need to deal with shareholders, especially large shareholders' wishes. If they dont want that type of noise, they can stay private. The activist investor wants what is best for the stock, so it is not necessarily bad. It can be bad though if they only want a short-term pop in the stock, instead of a longer term growth plan.