Mr. Ackman is an emerging star in the "shareholder activist" division of the hedge fund big leagues.
It was split from Viacom in December 2005, when Chief Sumner Redstone (still its controlling shareholder) yanked the broadcast division from its cable siblings MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central, among others, as well as movie studio Paramount Pictures.
Corporate behemoths meet and merge; then, buffeted by shareholder capitalism, spin off divisions like whirling nebulae.
Lucent, in Murray Hill, N.J., plans to spin off the yet-to-be renamed microelectronics division to shareholders, next year and sell 20percentt of its shares in an initial public offering.
Target may not be heeding calls to divest its credit-card division, but shareholders can take consolation in a move to take some customer borrowing off its books.
As cockroaches continue to emerge from under the America Online division, current shareholders are unfazed, if only because they've written that business off long ago.
KirchPayTV's new Chief Executive Georg Kofler is due this week to present thoughts on the pay television division to shareholders, including BSkyB, Lehman Brothers and other financial investors.
The company announced late Wednesday that shareholders of the Biosurgery division have filed a lawsuit over its decision to eliminate the tracking stock.
A day after Morgan Stanley announced its plan to spin off its Discover Card division, dissident shareholders demanded Tuesday that the investment firm's chief executive, Philip Purcell, be dismissed and be replaced by one of their own.
The company will spin off its semiconductor division to shareholders, and the chip spinoff will retain the C-Cube name and is likely to be headed-up by Umesh Padval, its current president.
