A watershed moment is coming for shareholder activism and corporate governance generally, as the proxy contest brought by Trian Management Fund, seeking effectively to break up DuPont, enters its final stages (with the vote being less than a month away). Technically, the contest is to elect four Trian Fund nominees to the DuPont board, but, as a column in the New York Time's Dealbook put it more bluntly, the real fight is over whether to break DuPont into three parts and "shut down DuPont's central research labs." [1] Much about this contest is unusual: unlike other targets of activism, DuPont has regularly outperformed the S&P 500 Index and virtually all other metrics for corporate profitability. Its stock price has risen over 185% since its CEO, Ellen Kullman, took office six years ago (while the S&P 500 Index rose only 122% over the same period). [2] The Trian Fund owns only a small stake (less than 3%), but still the contest is close.