Episode 75 — Please join us for this week’s episode of Margaritas with Marguerita Cheng, CFP® Pro: Meet our guest — John O’Connell, author, “Rise of the Activist Investor”

A Note from Marguerita Cheng, CFP® Pro — I invite you to tune in for this week’s episode of my podcast and video show, Margaritas with Marguerita, where for 15 minutes, we learn from industry experts how to flex our financial muscles.

Today’s Topic: Sustainable investing and the rise of the activist investor featuring author John O’Connell

Rita asks John: 

• What is an activist investor?
• What changes are coming together to cause a rise in activist investors?
• How is activist investing different from ESG or sustainable investing?
• What will be the effect of the Rise of The Activist Investor?

Meet our guest: John O’Connell has more than 29 years of leadership experience in emerging businesses and mature, established organizations. He started his career designing and developing financial applications at Merrill Lynch and KPMG Peat Marwick. John then transitioned from developing technology into sales and marketing while leading the financial services vertical for Sybase. John was a member of the senior leadership teams for several startups culminating in an IPO and packaging 2 other firms for their sale. He returned to Merrill for several years and until its acquisition in 2008. He held North American leadership positions at Oracle for over 8 years. He was the president of a private FinTech firm and held C-level customer-facing roles at publicly traded InsureTech and FinTech firms.

John was inspired to become an author for his three daughters, who are part of the Emerging Wealth Class. “They have solid careers and are interested in growing their wealth, but they were not prepared in school for investing,” John believes. “Like many of their friends in the emerging wealth class, they live through social movements, are socially conscious, and want their investments to reflect their values.”

In his book, John explains that the Emerging Wealth Class will inherit an estimated $30 to $68 trillion in the expected Great Wealth Transfer when their aging parents die and transfer their accumulated wealth to their adult children.

“Wealth has an enormous power to change companies and how they behave. “What happens if a company you think is a good investment does not align with your values, or worse, you’ve invested in them, and the company turns away from your values? How about companies that you believe are excessively paying their executives at the expense of their workforce? How can you change the direction of these companies? The Great Wealth Transfer in the hands of socially conscious investors will give rise to an activist investor movement.”

Click here to learn more about John: john-oconnell.com. Find his book for sale on Amazon.

Learn more about Marguerita Cheng, CFP® Pro: MargueritaCheng.com • Listen to Rita’s podcast show, Margaritas with Marguerita, on her radio channel: MargueritaChengRadio.com • Watch all of the show’s video episodes on Rita’s YouTube channel: www.MargueritaCheng.tv