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 outstanding at most companies.It’s really worth a quick visit to our earlier article on The Long and Sometimes Checkered Past of the Proxy Solicitation Business to see how much has changed – and how much has stayed the same, mostly for better but sometimes worse at many players.
Georgeson is still here, albeit after changing ownership multiple times over the years, and not nearly the megalith it once was. A few of the firms mentioned have bitten the dust - or nearly so. But, notably, quite a few of the firms mentioned back then have gained significant market share - since, as noted, this is still very much a “people business” – which needs creative, highly entrepreneurial and charismatic leadership to really stand out from the pack – AND a smart, savvy, cohesive and experienced team as well. We still chuckle to ourselves that not so long ago Georgeson’s then leaders blithely riffed a guy who quickly founded Okapi Partners - which has since passed them up by a country mile in the high-stakes high-margin proxy fight business.
Bloomberg’s 2025 Global Advisory Rankings reports that Okapi handled 25 proxy fights on the “Activist side” in 2025, with $15.9b in play – plus another 26 fights on the Company-side, where Okapi is especially adept at working either side of the street and where many of the old-guard firms actually bragged about turning down activists for many years.
Saratoga Partners, a relatively small firm, but run by very long-term proxy-fighting experts, logged 25 fights, with $2.0 b in play and yet another smallish firm, Investorcom, run by a former Don Carter star-pupil came in third, with 12 fights.
On the Company side, Sodali logged 67 fights globally with $28.9b in play, followed by Innisfree with 48 fights ($20.8 in play), while DF King logged 45 and Mackenzie Partners 31. We hasten to add that the rankings tend to vary a bit each year, given the ‘randomness’ of proxy fights that break out in any given year.
On the overall proxy solicitation front, we’d note that DF King still has, we think, the richest book of long-term clients and that Alliance Advisors has been the steadiest gainer of new clients over the past five or more years.
A special shout out to our friends at Laurel Hill Advisory Group, which was “quoted and noted by The Globe and Mail as Canada’s dominant shareholder communications and advisor firm, growing from 32% market share in 2020 to 42% market share in 2025 year to date”…while Kingsdale has dropped precipitously to 25% - showing how suddenly the tide can turn in this business. (Georgeson, the dominant leader in Canada for many decades had to leave the market entirely several years ago, when it was caught red-handed, manufacturing telephone votes that totally rigged a proxy contest there, forcing a re-do of the Meeting.)
We also want to give a shout-out to a relatively new arrival on the proxy solicitation scene - Lioness Consulting LLC – founded in 2024 by Donna Ackerly – a widely-known and highly regarded professional with over 40 years of experience in annual and special shareholder meetings, corporate actions, proxy fights and SPACs. We love the name – which aptly describes Donna’s history as someone who knows how to care for, protect and fiercely defend the best interests of her clients and we wish her and her firm every success.
Listen to hear their insights on this year’s annual meeting season.
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