Melissa Sawyer and Marc Treviño co-authored an article on how investor relations professionals should prepare to address the possibility of activist investors leveraging ESG issues in a June 4 IR Magazine article titled “Facing activists on ESG.” Melissa and Marc offered key strategies for dealing with this possibility, including reviewing and updating public disclosures and strengthening relationships with institutional shareholders. “Increasingly, companies are quietly engaging with these investors and are able to avoid a messy public fight,” Melissa and Marc said. “Collaborative engagement will not always help an issuer to avoid having to put an activist on its board, but it may reduce the number of board seats the activist obtains. More importantly, collaborative engagement may also help the activist, the incumbent directors and the management team to work together more constructively going forward.”