After Jana’s announcement, the company said it was “committed to driving value for all Whole Foods Market shareholders<br />and will continue to act to achieve this important objective.”<br />But analysts have speculated the company could be a takeover target, which would<br />result in a big payday for Jana, Neuberger Berman and other investors.<br />It secured two board seats, but the process, Mr. Amato said, was “in all honesty expensive and time-consuming.”<br />In the case of Whole Foods, Neuberger Berman lobbied for the activists to do the messy work of battling the company in public.<br />Relations between institutional investors and activists have evolved in recent years,<br />and it is not unheard-of for big investors to support activists who have set their sights on a high-profile company.<br />Charles Kantor, who oversees Neuberger Berman’s investment in Whole Foods, said<br />that the company had “a phenomenal brand and had executed the difficult things,” but that “they haven’t done well with the basic Retail 101.”<br />Mr. Kantor said it was normal for his group to speak with other investors.<br />For decades, Neuberger Berman — which invests some $267 billion for pension funds, sovereign wealth funds<br />and individuals — and peers like T. Rowe Price and BlackRock were reluctant to rock the boat at the companies they invested in.<br />Agitating for change was left to the activist hedge fund managers like Mr. Icahn<br />and Mr. Ackman, rabble-rousers with a reputation for shaking up companies, raising their stock prices and making big profits.
