Surely you've seen the new Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) report on activist investors? The one that asserts "shareholder activism is exploding" and advises companies to "prepare and respond"? It attracted some news coverage and investor analysis as the latest offering in shareholder engagement, the current fad in deflecting serious investor concerns. 

Among other helpful items from PwC, including a full report and a video, the risk assessment tool piques our interest. It reminds us of our time in big management consulting firms, where we pushed quizzes and questionnaires that aimed to frighten clients about how poorly they ran their businesses. It's a standard, if naive, tactic to scare up work. 

BoDs and CEOs can thus assess the risk of attracting various types of activist investors. The firm invites executives to "Check all of the factors that may apply, and see where you stand." PwC just wants to scare the crap out of executives, as they worry about attracting attention from a slick hedge fund.

In a current blog post, we studied the tool a bit, and ran some scenarios through it, to see how well it reflects how real activists think about portfolio companies.