“I bring things up that others don’t dare.”

Evelyn Y. Davis 

Summary

Shareholder Activism
Evelyn Y. Davis was a prominent investor and shareholder activist who challenged corporate leaders on issues such as company executive compensation, board diversity, and corporate political activity. She was known for her confrontational tactics at shareholder meetings.

Dramatic and Controversial Tactics
Davis used theatrical and provocative methods to gain notice, such as wearing costumes, making bold accusations, and engaging in heated exchanges with executives and other shareholders. Her dramatic style made her a widely recognized figure in corporate circles.

Legacy and Influence

Despite her approach to engaging in corporate and political forums, Davis successfully influenced corporate policies, including ending staggered board terms at major companies. She was a multi-millionaire investor, published a widely read newsletter, and continued her activism independently until her retirement.

Biography

Evelyn Y. Davis was an investor and shareholder activist who challenged corporate leaders on issues such as executive compensation, board diversity, and corporate political activity. For nearly sixty years, Davis was a fixture at the annual meetings of large public companies, where she infuriated corporate leaders with her confrontational tactics. Davis’s approach combined elements of shareholder primacy, radical disobedience, and unapologetic egotism.

Born in the Netherlands on August 16, 1929, Davis was briefly interned with her family in a Nazi concentration camp in Czechoslovakia during World War II, before immigrating to the United States. She bought her first shares of stock in Safeway, Inc. in 1953. By the late 1950s, Davis was a familiar face at corporate shareholders meetings, where she sometimes joined Lewis D. Gilbert, the famous advocate of corporate democracy, who aggressively questioned executives on corporate operations and strategy. Davis initially collaborated with Wilma Soss, another leading shareholder activist, but their relationship was strained by conflict.

Davis advocated for a federal incorporation law, opposed corporate charitable giving, and submitted numerous shareholder proposals, many seeking disclosure of corporate political expenditures. Several of her shareholder proposals to end staggered board terms won a majority of shareholder votes at companies such as Merck & Co., Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., and J. C. Penney Co. Davis founded Shareholders Research, Inc., and published an annual newsletter, Highlights and Lowlights of Annual Meetings of Corporations, from 1965 to 2011, which she sold to high-ranking corporate executives. The newsletter provided her with press credentials, which she used to attend White House press briefings and pose questions to U.S. Presidents.

Davis locked horns with some of the most prominent business leaders in America and was known for raising controversial issues. “I bring things up that others don’t dare,” she said. In the early 1960s, she questioned the head of Richardson-Merrell, Inc., the maker of Thalidomide, about the financial impact of the drug’s withdrawal from the market. She asked whether the pharmaceutical company was working on a birth control pill. In front of shareholder audiences, Davis demanded that chairmen of companies like Bethlehem Steel and the Communications Satellite Corporation explain why their companies had no Black or Jewish officers or directors. She spoke passionately against the merger of Chrysler Corp. with Germany’s Daimler-Benz AG, tearfully accusing the German carmaker of Nazi complicity during WWII; during her speech, she pulled down her stocking to point out a scar from a German grenade. Despite her positions on issues like board diversity and corporate political spending, Davis was not an advocate of the corporate social responsibility movement. In 1990, she told a reporter that “a company is there to make money, not to be socially responsible. That’s for the government to do.”

Davis had a flair for drama that made her a widely-photographed character at corporate meetings. She presented shareholder resolutions while puffing on a cigar. She sometimes attended shareholders’ meetings in costume, such as an aluminum dress that she wore to U.S. Steel’s gathering in 1968. In the middle of the meeting, she stripped off the dress, revealing another dress underneath, and presented the aluminum dress to the company’s chair. When she repeated this routine the following year at another company, press headlines labeled her a “stripper.” Davis’s physical appearance was a subject of routine commentary in the press in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, reflecting the sexism of the time. She embraced this and turned it on others, often demeaning the appearance of her detractors. 

Davis’s caustic approach turned off many corporate officials, financial reporters, and even her fellow shareholders. She was sometimes forcibly removed from shareholders’ meetings. She snapped at audiences that booed her and used coarse language and insults. At one meeting, she got into a shoving match with another shareholder over access to the microphone. At another meeting, she climbed onto the stage to join the Ford Motor Company’s executives, eluding a uniformed security guard who had been assigned to shadow her.

Davis referred to her own marriages as “mergers.” She was married and divorced three times. She pursued her investing and activism career independently from her husbands, however; by the 1990s, Davis was a multi-millionaire. Though she opposed corporate charitable spending, she formed her own charitable foundation which supported women’s hospitals, among other causes. Davis rang the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange in 2009 and retired from attending corporate meetings, at age 82, in 2012. She died on November 4, 2018, in Washington D.C.
 

Analysis Questions

1. How did her background surviving the Holocaust and witnessing cooperative governance issues, shape her approach?
2. How did Gender norms and media portrayals affect public perceptions of her?
3. How did cooperate leaders respond to her activism over time?
4. How does Davis’ stance on corporate social responsibility compare to modern shareholder activism?
    

Educator Notes

1. Observe, Reflect, Question (ORQ) Strategy
   • Observe: Have student read the text and highlight the key details about Evelyn Y. Davis’ activism and methods. Ask them to identify significant moments in her career.
   • Reflect: Encourage students to analyze Davis’ motivations and the historical context of her activism.
   • Question: Guide students in generating their own questions about Davis’ impact and legacy.