"February 14 Is Valentine’s Day For Some, It’s 13F Day For Us" Featuring Bill Anderson, Evercore

Today we had the exciting opportunity to host Bill Anderson, Senior Managing Director at Evercore and Global Head of the firm’s Activism/Raid Defense team and Strategic M&A Advisory practice. Bill is a pioneer in activism defense and has advised more than 500 companies facing activists or strategic raids, including many of the largest proxy fights and defense situations of the past two decades. Prior to joining Evercore in 2016, Bill spent more than 15 years at Goldman Sachs as an M&A partner and leader of its defense team. Earlier in his career, he was an M&A attorney at Simpson Thatcher & Bartlett, clerked on the Second Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals, worked as a CPA at Coopers & Lybrand, and served as a Captain in the U.S. Army Reserves. It was our pleasure to hear Bill’s perspectives on the latest M&A activity, activism and hostile preparedness, board composition and alignment, and the evolving dynamics between companies, shareholders, and capital markets.
 
In our conversation, we explore Bill’s career path from classic M&A work into defense and special committees as markets changed, and how activism became a major driver of M&A. Bill shares his top takeaways from 2025 activity, noting the wide range of deal types and attributing the acceleration in deal flow to greater antitrust optimism, liquid financing, and strong buyer stock performance. We discuss why activism has become a core risk-management issue for public companies, how activists can build positions via derivatives and broker-dealer exposure with limited disclosure (and why 13F filings can be an important early-warning signal), and how shareholder bases have evolved with index funds now a dominant ownership block alongside the continued influence of ISS and Glass Lewis. We cover the difficulty of mobilizing retail votes and related regulatory/state-law considerations, the deal approval environment under Trump versus Biden (including CFIUS as a wildcard), why companies are more careful describing synergies, the impact of universal proxy, and the importance of diversity, tenure, and sector expertise in board refreshment. We touch on the drivers of positive acquirer stock reactions, how companies communicate value at deal announcement, activist dynamics in M&A and when activism becomes contentious, the importance of board alignment and cohesion, increased spin-off activity, and much more. We ended by asking Bill for his thoughts on how companies can attract long-only capital. Throughout the discussion, we reference several elements of Evercore’s “2025 Year in Review Report.” It was a fascinating discussion and we appreciate Bill for sharing his time and insights.
 
Mike Bradley kicked us off by noting that the 10-year U.S. bond yield plunged this week following an unexpectedly soft December Retail Sales report. Bond volatility could remain elevated with January CPI set for release on Friday. On the crude oil market front, WTI price appears to have temporarily settled into a $60-$65/bbl trading range, given there have been no major new geopolitical surprises over the past week. In natural gas, prompt natural gas price has completely roundtripped since the Arctic blast started and is now trading back at ~$3.15/MMBtu. U.S. gas storage is back near normal levels (around the 5-year average) and winter weather from here through the end of withdrawal season will determine how constructive the setup is for summer gas price. On the broader equity market front, the DJIA has been one of the real winners this past week (up ~2.5-3.0%), especially versus the S&P 500 (up ~0.5%). Cyclical sectors (Energy, Industrials, and Materials) continue to be the market leaders, while Tech/Telecom continue to lag. In energy equities, most large-caps (Oil Majors, Oil Services, and Refiners) have already reported Q4 results, and the next few weeks will be dominated by E&Ps reporting. E&P commentary will likely be do