@tenet @fuzzychef The alternative is this:

Hedge fund managers tend to know each other. It's a very tight and densely connected community, just like fintech. This means that they organize and come up with strategies, because when you get right down to it they're an old boys network that treats investing like collecting bottle caps. The whole point of a hedge fund is that you invest in a thing (bottle caps, let's say) and a thing that can affect it (plastic bottle cap companies because they push back against old-school metal bottle caps, to continue the metaphor).

If they feel like their game is slipping - the playing field is changing against them - they can push back, in part to re-establish the old order, and in part to punish the companies they own lots of shares of.

If anyone owns more than a certain percentage of a company they can put a motion before the board of directors to vote on something. If those hedge funds get together and say "We, as majority shareholders, for blah reason, call a vote..."

The vote can be one of no confidence and force out the CEO, so they can vote somebody more tractable in. They can vote to shake up the board of directors, to get a couple of the current members removed and replaced with proxies of the funds. Or they can force a vote to change corporate policy: Cut salaries, cut other benefits, remove perks, institute layoffs (which is how I got laid off a few weeks ago), any number of things.

That memo was a shot across the bow. A threat.