Evelyn Y. Davis
Evelyn Yvonne Davis (August 16, 1929 – November 4, 2018) was an American activist shareholder known for her unconventional approach to corporate governance.
She owned stock in a wide number of companies, and published an annual newsletter focusing on the business world, Highlights and Lowlights.
Born into a wealthy family in Amsterdam, Davis survived the Holocaust and relocated to the United States after World War II, settling in Catonsville, Maryland.
Davis also advocated for more substantive changes including term limiting board members, banning greenmailing, and transparency in corporate political contributions.
Unfazed by controversy, Davis unashamedly sought media coverage for her actions and was a polarizing figure at shareholder meetings.
[4] During World War II, Evelyn, her mother, and older brother were forcibly taken to Nazi concentration camps at Barneveld and Westerbork and then to Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia because of their Jewish heritage.
[2] After graduating from the Catonsville High School in 1947,[4] she attended Western Maryland College and George Washington University, studying business administration.
[11] Davis published an annual newsletter titled Highlights and Lowlights,[12] which included a range of corporate news, gossip, and her personal opinions.
[16] While Davis maintained that she sold subscriptions because of her savvy analysis, others, such as fellow shareholder activist John J. Gilbert, attributed the success of the newsletter to CEOs who hoped to stay in her good graces.
[4] Larry Speakes wrote in his memoirs that while working in the Reagan administration, he would sit Davis in the back of the room because she was a "pest".
"[18] Later press secretary Marlin Fitzwater would call on Davis when he wanted to change the subject, favorably receiving her business questions.
"[19][13] She held stock in many major corporations, but only small numbers of shares of any specific company—though always enough to submit shareholder resolutions.
[14] In 1995 she noted that she only dealt with top corporate leadership, saying "I'm not gonna deal with nothings and nobodies, not me, Evelyn Y.
[20] Although she received substantial coverage for her handling of her stocks, most of Davis's net worth was held in bonds and the money market.
[7] In 1963 she was arrested for attempted prostitution, charges which attracted much attention but she later denied as "a corporate frameup" in retaliation for her activism as a shareholder.
[15] In 1983, Phil Caldwell, chairman of Ford, personally handed Davis keys to a new car that she bought in a public ceremony.
[13] A decade later, a reporter for Knight Ridder estimated that Davis had slowed down somewhat, putting her annual meeting attendance at 30-40 of the 120 companies she held stock in.
[12] At the 1995 meeting of CBS, after praising an expected acquisition by Westinghouse Electric Corporation as liberation "from the Tisch regime,” company chairman Laurence Tisch told her to “Sit down or be thrown out.”[25] The following year, Ted Turner of Turner Broadcasting System issued a similar threat.
[14] Davis became notorious for her outspoken manner: in 1996, People described her as "the nation’s most obstreperous corporate gadfly,"[7] and Vanity Fair wrote in 2002 that she was "arguably the most famous and least loved shareholder activist in the country.
[22] She regularly pressed for lower pay for executives, board members to be term-limited, companies to be transparent about political contributions, and requiring the election of accountants.
"[2] The corporate scholar Graeme Guthrie credited Davis's work with giving shareholders a say, even if her proposals did not always get implemented.
[22] Davis stated that she "did not believe" in women holding corporate positions of power, saying that "men are more objective; I'd much rather deal with them than a bunch of jealous bitches.
[15] Though some found her comments irritating, and at times she was removed from the room,[2] Davis felt her confrontational manner benefitted all shareholders, noting that she asked questions nobody else did, and added that she did not care what others thought.
