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To inform on recent developments in shareholder activism, a phenomenon well-documented in North America and Europe and now spreading to Latin America, and summarize the key considerations for corporate boards.

The article discusses a recent development involving Cartica Capital, a USA hedge fund and minority shareholder in CorpBanca, a Chilean bank pursuing a merger with Itau Unibanco Holding SA, Latin America’s biggest bank by market value, Cartica.

Shareholder activism will continue to be an expanding global phenomenon.

Boards must continue to plan accordingly when structuring a strategic transaction, both in and outside the USA market.

Practical overview of recent developments in shareholder activism with a review of the key considerations for practitioners.

To provide an overview of the guidance for proxy firms and investment advisers included in the Staff Legal Bulletin released this year by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) after its four-year comprehensive review of the proxy system.

Discusses briefly the context in which the SEC’s review was conducted; the general themes of the guidance provided; the most notable aspects of the guidance; and the matters that were expected to be, but were not, addressed by the SEC.

The guidance does not go as far in regulating proxy advisory firms as many had anticipated it would. The key obligations specified in the guidance are imposed on the investment advisers who engage the proxy firms. The responsibilities, policies and procedures mandated do not change the fundamental paradigm that has supported the influence of proxy firms – that is, investment advisers continue to be permitted to fulfill their duty to vote client shares in a “conflict-free manner” by voting based on the recommendations of independent third parties, and continue to be exempted from the rules that generally apply to persons who solicit votes or make proxy recommendations.

The SEC staff states in the Bulletin that it expects that proxy firms and investment advisers will conform to the obligations imposed in the Bulletin “promptly, but in any event in advance of [the 2015] proxy season.”

Practical guidance from experienced M&A lawyers.

That photography was more than a mere technological breakthrough was clear to its inventors but not to their contemporaries or generations after. The fast visual appropriation of “reality,” the sudden transformation of this reality into an image which mirrored our world, gave us a new lease on immortality. From its inception, photography became an act of assertion and vainglory and biographers could study the psychology of a face as well as the depth of the soul. Walt Whitman once wrote: “I've been photographed, photographed, and photographed until the cameras themselves are tired of me.” (As quoted by Justin Kaplan. Walt Whitman. A Life. Simon & Schuster, 1980.) From Whitman's ego trips to the forced smiles in that brief but powerful scene in the film, Ordinary People, when family soul‐searching is captured by the click of a camera, the world around us is preserved and mythologized. Photography is witness to history and art, and shapes our lives as well. In a recent interview, Mikhail Baryshnikov stated that as a dancer he had been influenced not only by other choreographers but by “movies, musicals,(and) photo exhibitions.” (The New York Times, June 28, 1981, p. 6). Thus, photography becomes archival material, for it speaks of the human adventure in all its diversity.

With the changing business environment, skills rather than familiarity with rules are more important to accountants’ success. In response to mounting criticisms of accounting education and supported by calls from the Accounting Education Change Commission, efforts have been made by some accounting educators to adapt accounting education to this changing environment. However, there is little research to date about the individual characteristics that can be leveraged to improve the outcome of accounting education. We investigate three individual characteristics: anti-intellectualism, tolerance for ambiguity, and internal locus of control. The results show that all three variables may impact performance in accounting education and that the structure of an accounting program may reward characteristics that are not in line with skills required by the profession. Fortunately, the design of an accounting program may help students alter their skills to be more in line with professional requirements.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an integrative review of coaching research from different contexts (e.g. athletics, executive coaching, project management and sales), delineate professional sales coaching from other developmental activities and develop a research agenda for stimulating research on professional sales coaching. Professional sales coaching is considered an important sales force developmental program by both sales practitioners and researchers. Yet, research on sales coaching remains fragmented in the extant literature.

An extensive literature review of extant research and theoretical perspectives on coaching as well as insights gathered from exploratory, in-depth interviews of ten sales managers were used to develop the research agenda.

The review and research agenda identify a number of sales coaching-related topics that warrant further research. Specifically, the research agenda addresses salesperson characteristics, sales manager and coach characteristics, selling organization characteristics, sales coaching approaches, nature and effectiveness of the sales coaching process and, finally, outcomes of sales coaching. For each topic, extant research, relevant insights from exploratory interviews and directions for future research are discussed.

This paper is the first integrative review of coaching-related research in the sales literature. It offers an updated conceptualization of sales coaching and identifies opportunities for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on the factors related to women’s ability to achieve and maintain abstinence from alcohol.

A rapid evidence assessment was carried out in four stages: definitions and research questions were agreed, search and selection were completed, data were extracted, quality of studies was assessed, and findings were synthesised and presented.

Medline, PsycINFO, CINAHL and ASSIA were searched for cohort studies published in English during January 2000–February 2015. Expanded search terms for Women, Alcohol and Abstinence, and Cohort were used to identify relevant studies for inclusion, resulting in 1,040 records. Of these, 32 manuscripts from 31 studies were eligible for inclusion in the review. Alcohol-related factors such as increased quantity and frequency of alcohol consumption were related to lower likelihood of achieving and maintaining abstinence; treatment factors such as type of treatment and number of treatment episodes were related to higher and lower likelihood; demographic factors such as financial problems and poor housing status were related to lower likelihood; and psychological factors such as craving, other drug use and comorbid health problems were linked to lower likelihood.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time the factors related to the specific outcome of abstinence in women have been synthesised. Many of the factors found are also known to contribute to vulnerability for developing alcohol problems. The review revealed the paucity of studies with female only samples, or where results for women were reported separately.