Pushing to right society’s wrongs is not Ides’ goal. “We’re there first and last to make money,” McKeever says. Still, Ides’ efforts set it apart from its peers. In the past five years the top five activist hedge funds nominated women for just 4% of the board seats they targeted, according to Bloomberg. That’s despite evidence that gender diversity correlates with financial performance: Companies in the MSCI World index with at least three women on their board posted an annual return on equity of 10.1% over a six-year period through last summer, compared with 7.4% for companies without.
McKeever’s initial challenge was getting others to take her seriously. When she approached Boingo with her new-director nominees, the company said it “had never heard of Ides Capital.” McKeever and her cofounder, Rob Longnecker, owned just 0.18% of Boingo’s stock at the time, far less than the stakes of 5% or more that activist investors often buy to gain leverage over a company. “Normally, a holder of that size you don’t really need to listen to or negotiate with; her chances of winning were exceedingly low,” says Karen Finerman, CEO of Metropolitan Capital Advisors and one of McKeever’s nominees to Boingo’s board. “And she did.”