Steven Lipin: Activism, M&A, and the Rising Stakes of Board Communication

(0:00) Intro

(1:36) About the podcast sponsor: The American College of Governance Counsel

(2:23) Start of interview

(3:11) Steve's origin story

(5:05) His Journey into Journalism

(6:02) The Rise of Governance Movement

(7:00) Transformation of Board Accountability. Reference to the 1992 Board coup at GM and other historical changes.

(10:24) Communication in Governance

(12:25) Establishing Gladstone Place Partners

(15:00) Crisis Management and Board Roles

(17:34) The Importance of Investor Relations

(20:40) Current Landscape of Shareholder Activism. 

(25:14) The Snap activism case. The impact of activism on companies with dual-class share structures.

(30:12) M&A Transactions, Delaware and DExit. The impact of Twitter's acquisition by Elon Musk. Reference to E201 with Leo Strine.

(34:47) The Ongoing Cybersecurity Challenge. Reference to Anthropic's new Claude Mythos. 

(37:51) The Impact of AI on Governance. The case of Anthropic's dispute with the Pentagon. *Reference to evanepstein.substack.com and E204 with Eric Ries.

(42:50) AI's PR problem. The challenge of building data centers. The geopolitics of AI.

(46:30) Impact of job firings, due to AI?

(49:53) The state of ESG and DEI in 2026.

(52:05) Books that have greatly influenced his life:

1. The Island at the Center of the World, by Russell Shorto (2004)
2. The Power Broker, by Robert Caro (1974)
3. Alexander Hamilton, by Ron Chernow (2004)

(53:10) His mentors. 

(54:00) Quotes that he thinks of often or lives her life by (Grateful Dead lyrics)

(54:24) An unusual habit or an absurd thing that he loves

(55:06) The living person he most admires

Steven Lipin is founder and CEO of communications advisory firm Gladstone Place Partners and a trusted advisor in the field of strategic, financial and corporate governance communications.

You can follow Evan on social media at:

X: @evanepstein

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/ 

Substack: https://evanepstein.substack.com/

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Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License