Academics have a habit of taking a long time to confirm things we thought we already knew. It took Bertrand Russell years of study and 1,994 pages to prove in his Principia Mathematica that one plus one equals two. A recent academic study showing that hedge fund activism boosts the share prices of the target companies would appear to confirm this thesis.

While the report, by four academics in the US, requires a PhD in mathematics to understand it in places, it provides an invaluable insight into the murky world of hedge fund activism, not least because it is the most comprehensive analysis yet conducted, covering nearly 900 incidents of activism over five years.