Hedge fund activists claim they are merely aiming to improve a company’s operations or financial stability, but they have no incentive to produce value, only extract it. They have two goals: increase cash flow over which the company has control and extract that cash flow. Similar to the financial engineering strategies of private equity, hedge funds pressure their targets to utilize mass layoffs, corporate tax evasion, price gouging, corporate asset sales, and acquisitions of cash-rich companies. Extracting the cash is then accomplished through dividends and stock buybacks.

XREF: Connects to the financialization critique and the parallel drawn with private equity's financial engineering strategies described in the same passage.

Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, loc. 145