Is Fear Elliott Management's Best Weapon?

Activist investors are accused of being short-term thinkers who favor financial engineering at the expense of fundamental re-investment in the company or its people. A recent research paper by Thomas Keusch of Erasmus University in Rotterdam, cited in the Harvard Business Review, disputes that claim. So do those at Paul Singer’s Elliott Management, perhaps one of the most consistently successful activist hedge funds in history — and among the most feared. Activist fund managers increasingly go after CEO’s Since its founding in 1977, Elliott has delivered investors negative returns only twice, and the one year, in the wake of the…