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Podcast Alert: Annual Meeting Season 2026 — Expert Advice from Carl & Peder Hagberg
Carl and Peder Hagberg of The Shareholder Service OPTIMIZER join Meredith Ervine from TheCorporateCounsel.net to discuss proxy season risks, virtual meetings, and shareholder engagement for 2026.
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FOUR TOP ISSUES TO WATCH OUT FOR IN THE 2026 AGM SEASON
If you haven’t yet had a chance to listen to the Timely Takes Podcast from TheCorporateCousel.net, moderated by Meredith Ervine and featuring your co-editors, it is still not too late to listen, learn – and prepare. First, as noted (and see below for more details) the risks of being sued by would-be proponents whose proposals are summarily dismissed are still big ones, and for many readers,...
MAJOR PROXY SOLICITORS WILL RECOMMEND OUR “VOTES HAVE VALUE” BOOKLET TO CLIENTS THIS SEASON
The OPTIMIZER is very pleased to announce that many of the best proxy solicitation firms will be recommending to clients that they use our educational booklet, “Shareholder Votes Have Value”© this season as part of the overall 2026 campaign - especially those with low 2025 quorums – and those with Proxy Fights. To date, Alliance Advisors, InvestorCom, Laurel Hill, Lioness Consulting, Mackenzie...
THE RISKS OF LAWSUITS FROM “DISSED PROPONENTS” ARE REAL ONES, ISSUERS: DON’T LET MORE SHAREHOLDER DOLLARS GO TO WASTE, WE SAY, BUT STAND FIRM IF A PROPOSAL IS WEAK
The ink was hardly dry on the SEC release on no no-action letters when three thwarted proponents went to court to seek relief, as we predicted many would do. Four NYC public pension funds sued AT&T in New York federal court over its decision to exclude a workforce diversity shareholder proposal after the company decided it had a “reasonable basis” to exclude it. The same day, another...
Reinventing Proxy Voting: Empowering Shareholders in the Digital Era
Cathy H. Conlon Senior Vice President & General Manager, Disclosure, Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. A Brief Look Back A cornerstone of corporate governance is proxy voting – the main mechanism by which shareholders exercise their rights and influence how a company is run. I think it is fair to say that proxy voting has become more important as corporate governance has evolved and...
Podcast Alert: Annual Meeting Season 2026 — Expert Advice from Carl & Peder Hagberg
Carl and Peder Hagberg of The Shareholder Service OPTIMIZER join Meredith Ervine from TheCorporateCounsel.net to discuss proxy season risks, virtual meetings, and shareholder engagement for 2026. Listen to hear their insights on this year’s annual meeting season. Annual Meeting Resources: Sample Run of Show Sample Rules of Conduct Shareholder Votes Have Value Booklet
Retail Investors Take the Mic: Engaging the Modern Shareholder
Retail Influence on the Rise The 2025 proxy season highlighted a paradox the OPTIMIZER has long noted: retail shareholders are more important than ever, yet remain seriously under-engaged when it comes to actually voting their proxies. At many large-cap companies, retail investors controlled nearly 40% of shares, but only 28% of those shares were voted—a nine-year low. And this number, please...
2025 Was The 90th Anniversary Of The Proxy Solicitation Business: A Quick Look At The “Highlights And Lowlights” And A Closer Look At Where It Stands Today
It’s been 90 years since the Nye family turned its brokerage business, Georgeson & Co., into a “proxy-chasing business” in 1935 – a time when individual investments in stocks had become very big business and voted proxies were very much in demand at Shareholder Meetings since this was long before Mutual Funds and other big investment funds ended up owning the vast majority of the shares...
2025 MARKS THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF “NOTICE AND ACCESS” – THE BEST “PUSH-MODEL” EVER!
BILLIONS OF DOLLARS SAVED. BUT NOW, IT DESPERATELY NEEDS A FIX: A “PULL-MODEL” THAT WORKS – AND A RADICAL RE-ORDERING OF REQUIRED INFO Issuers of securities should be sounding big cheers for 25 years of Notice and Access – which has saved tens of billions of dollars in printing, enclosing and pushing paper proxy packages to investors, many of whom mostly threw them in the trash. We well recall...
Turmoil In Proxy Land: Why It’s More Important Than Ever To Have Truly Expert Outside Counsel On Your Team
In our 30+ years of deep involvement in shareholder meetings, proxy voting, proxy contests, shareholder activism, and corporate governance in general, we have NEVER seen an environment as volatile or as consequential as the one corporate issuers will face in 2026. Consider just a few of the converging forces: A major deregulatory shift at the SEC — including no No-Action letters for the 2026 AGM...
Turmoil In The Corporate Counsel Community
The Bloomberg Rankings Reveal Some Major Surprises – And Lots Of Surprisingly Missing Names On The Law Firm Side Of Proxy Fights… where, it should be noted, the lawyers are often instrumental in choosing the proxy solicitor… and some old-guard leaders are currently on a lot of “no fly lists” for caving without a fight to Trump demands for cash and pro-bono work as ‘reparations.’ The top-three...
Start Preparing For Your 2026 AGM Now!
Yes, we know it’s mid-summer, but now really is the time to start thinking about your 2025 Annual Meeting, while you have a bit of idle time to reflect on what worked well – and not so well in 2025 – both at your company and at other companies like your own – and to prepare early for 2026. For starters, take a look at our reports on VSMs – on the best – and on those that had glitches, glaring...
Institutional Investors Promise To Monitor And Act On VSMs That Short-Circuit Investor Participation
As the big Spring Shareholder Meeting Season begins we want to renew our warnings that “Big Brother is watching” – and rightly so, we say - to be sure that all shareholders are given a fair chance - not just to listen passively, but to be HEARD at VSMs – AND that they are given sufficient time to CAST THEIR VOTES after the “discussion period” is over. Please be sure to visit our website,...
Awful Advice On VSMs From A Big T-A: Take It At Your Peril
In the run-up to the annual podcast covering “The Conduct of the Annual Meeting,” a prospective attendee wrote in to ask if they could pre-record their entire Meeting, and to answer only pre-recorded questions, saying that their transfer agent (one of the biggest ones, that we will allow to remain anonymous) recommended this to them as part of a “major trend.” Ouch! We responded that Meetings...
A Quick Review Of The Apple VSM (We Were Pretty Happy Until We Realized We’d Been Snookered)
In keeping with our plans to tune in and review more VSMs this year we were happy to attend Apple’s nice (and early, for West-Coasters) Feb. 25th Meeting, held at 8:00 a.m. Pacific time; 11:00 Eastern. Apple is one of our top-two investments – with an amazing 54,526.7% return, and we LOVE them – but with a sorta’ bad record for shareholder meetings, having mis-reported the voting results TWICE...
Take Ownership of Your Governance: Don’t Wait for Activists to Start the Conversation
Navigating M&A and Shareholder Activism: Key Insights for 2025 Co-Editor Peder Hagberg interviews Bob Marese, President of MacKenzie Partners, on current trends in mergers and acquisitions, shareholder engagement, activism, and effective board governance heading into the 2025 Proxy Season. Q: Bob, can you provide an overview of what’s happening at MacKenzie Partners and how recent changes in...
Leveling the Playing Field of Corporate and Shareholder Transparency
A Call to Action from Joseph Caruso, CEO, Alliance Advisors Joe Caruso: Over the past few years, there’s been a growing call for greater corporate transparency, especially from government agencies, institutional investors, and proxy advisory firms. But are we really creating a level playing field when it comes to shareholder transparency? OPTIMIZER: It seems that we’re still far from that....
Shareholder Services: History
Podcast Alert: Annual Meeting Season 2026 — Expert Advice from Carl & Peder Hagberg
Carl and Peder Hagberg of The Shareholder Service OPTIMIZER join Meredith Ervine from TheCorporateCounsel.net to discuss proxy season risks, virtual meetings, and shareholder engagement for 2026.
Listen to hear their insights on this year’s annual meeting season.
Carl Hagberg
The Shareholder Service OPTIMIZER, first published in 1994, is “dedicated to helping public companies – and their suppliers – to deliver better and more cost-effective services to shareholders”.
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