CCI staff share recent surveys, reports and analysis on risk, compliance, governance, infosec and leadership issues. Share details of your survey with us: editor@corporatecomplianceinsights.com.
Activist investors’ demands for M&A sales up almost 50%
Mergers and acquisitions demands emerged as the tool of choice for activist investors in the first half of 2026, according to a report by Diligent Market Intelligence, the GRC solutions provider, in association with Sodali & Co. and Sullivan & Cromwell.
Following an analysis of its activism, voting, compensation and activist shorts data from January to June 2026, Diligent found activist investors’ demands pushing US-based targets to sell increased almost 50% from the same period last year. Diligent found 47 push-for-sale demands over the first half of 2026.
“Activists began leaning into M&A in late 2025 and carried that momentum into 2026, showing their determination to maximize returns while the dealmaking window is perceived to be open,” Josh Black, editor-in-chief of Diligent Market Intelligence, said in the report.
(CCI’s resource library includes Diligent’s report on activist opposition to M&A sales deals, which draws on a decade of data and information.)
While M&A demands rose, boards are avoiding the ballot box. Proxy contests advanced by activists fell in 2026’s first half, according to Diligent. Only 12 proxy contests were advanced, a decline by market volatility attributed to geopolitical conflict. Compared to the first halves of 2025 and 2024 that’s a decrease of 33% and 66% respectively, Diligent said. Instead of contentious votes, boards want to settle as shown by activist investors securing 84 of 85 seats through settlement in early 2026. However, the time to reach these board-seat settlements more than doubled from 17 days in 2025 to 36 days in 2026.
Activist investors took their fights to other arenas than the ballot as shown by the decrease in shareholder proposals to face votes at US-based annual meetings, which dropped more than 15% from 456 in early 2025 to 386 in early 2026, according to Diligent. Proponents shifted to alternative approaches like private negotiations, legal challenges and withhold campaigns.
Other key findings of the report include:
- Median granted CEO compensation in the S&P 500 increased by almost 8% to reach $18.2 million with AI beginning to surface as a performance metric in the tech sector.
- The number of short campaigns advanced globally increased by 32% in early 2026 with the US market accounting for 66% of overall activity.
- The US accounted for 54% of global activism activity.
High data security confidence, high data security concerns
Company leaders’ near unanimous confidence in protecting data from malicious forces is belied by a significant percentage expressing concerns for the safety of the same data, a new survey by DevOps AI platform Perforce Software found.
Based on a global survey of more than 500 enterprise leaders of billion-dollar companies with 25,000 or more employees, Perforce found that 98% responded that they are confident their organizations are protecting sensitive data. Yet, more than three-fourths (77%) are concerned about data breaches and theft in non-production data environments, and 74% are concerned about audit issues or failures.
Those concerns are justified as 43% reported their organizations have experienced audit failures, and 34% said they’ve gone through breaches or theft in non-production data environments.
The amount of data that needs protecting is only growing, according to the survey. More than half (57%) told Perforce they have an increasing volume of sensitive data in non-production environments that’s being driven by increased use of data for decision making and faster release cycles.
The barriers to protecting sensitive data in non-production are concerns about the data quality and high levels of effort involved, nearly a quarter of respondents said.
AI is also complicating matters. Despite a vast majority (86%) responding that they have AI data privacy mandates and 98% feeling confident about protecting sensitive data in AI workflows, between 62% and 68% are concerned about data leaks and training data breaches with AI.
