Peter Michelsen

Pete Michelsen is a partner at Qatalyst, where he leads the firm’s Activism and Shareholder Advisory practice.

Pete serves as a senior advisor to Qatalyst’s clients across all sectors of technology on matters including shareholder activism defense, proxy fights, contested M&A and complex corporate governance and ESG matters.  Prior to joining Qatalyst, Pete spent 11 years at Goldman Sachs, where he most recently served as Head of Activism and Shareholder Advisory for the Americas, as well as 4 years at CamberView Partners (now PJT Camberview), where he served as President, Partner and Co-Head of Contested Situations. He began his career at Merrill Lynch, where he worked as an M&A generalist analyst and associate.

Pete has advised on more than 100 shareholder activism, contested M&A and normal course M&A engagements for clients with aggregate market capitalizations of over $500 billion, including Amylin, Citrix, Clorox, Dell, eBay, Emulex, Freeport McMoRan, Genzyme, Hologic, HP Inc., Litton Industries, Louisiana Pacific, Mentor Graphics, Meridian Gold, Micrel, Mobile Mini, Norfolk Southern, Plantronics, Pluralsight, Simpson Manufacturing, Summit Materials, Talend, Taubman Centers, United Technologies, Valeant, Verint, Vonage, and Yahoo!.

In addition, he has advised clients on a broad range of complex corporate governance and ESG matters including votes on say-on-pay and shareholder proposals, “vote no” campaigns, ESG-related shareholder engagement, and IPO corporate governance planning.

Pete received a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Claremont McKenna College and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.