Is down market making it hard for activist investors?

Steven Davidoff Solomon interviewed on Bloomberg, Feb. 8, 2016

Activism’s been a great strategy for the past few years. Because it’s a rising market, you come in, you split the company, normally there’s a pop right there, or you sell the company, and there’s a pop right there. But in a down market, it’s much harder to do–much harder to sell the company, much harder to arrange a split. CEOs are scared, they don’t want to engage in risky transactions. So it just becomes a much harder strategy.