We examine the impact of activist hedge fund campaigns on corporate Intangible Capital (IC) investments, a key determinant of corporate long-term growth and performance. We document that post-activist campaigns, targeted firms reduce IC investments by more than 10% compared to carefully matched non-target firms. In cross-sectional analyses, we observe the largest effects in less competitive industries, for older target firms and for firms with high financial constraints suggesting that IC cuts are more common in low-discipline and low-barriers-to-invest contexts. Hedge funds are cutting down IC investments when they engage both in relatively short and longer interventions but especially so when they have less industry investment experience. Further, we do not find evidence of post-intervention increased investment efficiency in targeted firms, casting some doubt on the longer-term value-added of activist IC slashing campaigns. Finally, in an attempt to identify where the saved IC resources post intervention flow to, we observe that targeted firms increase corporate payouts and prefer share repurchase programs above cash dividends.

我们研究了激进对冲基金活动对企业无形资本（IC）投资的影响，这是企业长期增长和业绩的关键决定因素。我们记录了，与精心匹配的非目标公司相比，后激进主义活动后，目标公司的 IC 投资减少了 10% 以上。在横断面分析中，我们观察到竞争较弱的行业、较老的目标公司和财务约束较高的公司受到的影响最大，这表明IC削减在低纪律和低投资壁垒的环境中更为常见。当对冲基金进行相对短期和长期的干预时，尤其是当它们的行业投资经验较少时，它们就会减少集成电路投资。此外，我们没有发现干预后目标公司投资效率提高的证据，这对激进的 IC 削减活动的长期增值产生了一些怀疑。最后，为了确定干预后节省下来的集成电路资源流向何处，我们观察到目标公司增加了公司派息，并且更喜欢股票回购计划而不是现金股息。