Keane Leads The Way
Keane, the country’s #1 provider of unclaimed property communications, compliance & consulting services, is making a difference for our clients.
Global Shares
The Optimizer’s Editor Interviews John Bagdonas, Vice President, Business Development, Global Shares
Introducing Loyaltyshares… A Truly Revolutionary Development That, Among Other Things, Lets Public Companies Turn Debt Into Equity…
The Optimizer’s Editor Interviews Ellen Philip And Cal Donly Of Ellen Philip Associates
Computershare: Committed To Service Quality
An Interview With Jay McHale, President, US Equity Services, Computershare
Proxy Solicitation – The Next Generation
An Interview With Michael Mackey, President, Alliance Advisors, LLC
When The Protectors Of Abandoned Property Become The Predators… What Should Public Companies Be Doing??
An Interview With Bob Irvine, President And Jennifer Borden, Executive Vice President & General Counsel, Unclaimed Property Recovery And Reporting, LLC
Outsource The Corporate Secretary Role?
Does It Ever Make Sense For A Company To Outsource The Corporate Secretary Role? Or To Bring Someone In Temporarily, To Supplement Existing Staff? Kris Veaco, Founder Of The Veaco Group In San Francisco, Shares Some Insights… And Some Recent Case Histories
Laurel Hill Advisory Group
An Interview With Dr. William J. Catacosinos, Chairman, Laurel Hill Advisory Group
Tumult In The Proxy Solicitation Industry As The “Assets” Take The Elevators Down At Night… And Ride New Ones Up Next Day
Issuers Ask, “Who Moved My Cheese?” And “Who’s Who In This Suddenly Crazy Space?” And “What, If Anything, Should We Be Doing?”
OMG! The Fastest Way To Vote Proxies In 2010 Turns Out To Be Snail-Mail!
This year we are paying much closer attention to the proxy packages we receive than we ever did before. And we know we’re far from alone here, although how carefully most other individual investors will attend to these matters…
“Dofra”, “Dodfra”, “Direct Access” And The “Proxy Plumbing Release”… Get Out Those Plumbers-Helpers Pronto!
Whether you call it “DOFRA” as Pat McGurn calls it, or “DODFRA”, to give Dodd and Frank equal billing, the Dodd-Frank act passed both houses of congress as we were drafting this issue and will likely be law before we go to press.
Meanwhile, Some T-As Agitate To Compete Against Broadridge For Some Of Their Gigantic Proxy Distribution And Tabulation Business; Most, We Think, Have Missed That Boat Entirely:
Long before the Broadridge entry onto T-A-turf – for roughly 20 years in fact – transfer agents have been protesting the “lock” that Broadridge has on the street-side proxy distribution and tabulation business.
Yikes! The Transfer Agent Merry-Go-Round Has Been Whirling At A Faster And More Furious Pace Than Ever
Every year around this time – for 16 years now – we’ve been reporting on the “T-A Merry-Go-Round”, which has been whirling faster and faster every year – at least where the competitive scene is concerned.
Transfer Agents: Gotta Have’em… Gotta Love’em
Sometimes it seems that the OPTIMIZER picks on transfer agents a lot – as lots of public companies seem to do too these days. Partly it’s because it’s such a tough business to run well in the best of times.
Meeting Admission Criteria – One Of This Year’s Hottest Topics
So far this year, we’ve gotten more questions about annual and special meeting admission criteria than about any other topic…except that is, for the perennial question “what’s up with those transfer agents?”
Some “Early Returns” From The Annual Meeting Front:
It’s still early-days as we write this, but a few trends are emerging that seem worth a mention
These May Be Our Top-Tips Ever On How To Guarantee A More “Civil” Annual Meeting
Last year, we attended the meeting of a long-term client where we were shocked! Shocked!…to see more women wearing hats and gloves – and more men carrying hats – than we have seen in one place since the 1950s.
An Interim Report On Virtual Annual Meetings
Guess what? It’s been nine years since the first “virtual only” annual meeting…at Inforte…
Our 2010 Meeting Season Roundup
What, If Anything, Can We Learn – To Better Prepare For 2011?
Some Notes From The Virtual-Meeting Front
So far this season, there have been 20 “Virtual Shareholder Meetings”: About half were “totally virtual meetings” – held totally in cyberspace – and the rest were so-called “hybrid virtual meetings”
A Recordbreaking Number Of Glitches Cross Our Desk In The Spring 2010 Annual Meeting Season
Indicative, We Think, Of A Serious Level Of “Inattention To Details” And A Serious Industry Brain-Drain
A Few Hot Issues To Watch As Annual Meeting Season Approaches
Great news for public companies, though bad news for most proxy solicitors, the 2011 Proxy Season seems to be shaping up as the least contentious one in a decade or more:
More On Virtual Meetings: We Come Up With A Simple Solution To Activist Objections To “Virtual Only” Formats
Regular readers know that we have been following developments on the “Virtual Only” Annual and Special Meeting front from the get-go, and that we are big fans of the concept – and especially of the big potential money-savings that can be realized.
More On Virtual Forums: Maybe The Best Good Governance Idea Ever
While Virtual Meetings have been getting lots of notice of late, we think that Virtual Investor Forums have the potential to transform the corporate governance landscape in an even bigger and better way
Transfer Agents Are Facing Multi-Million Dollar Investments To Be Ready For Cost-Basis Reporting… And Perhaps, For More Backup Withholding By Money-Starved State Governments
An Interim Rreport On Virtual Annual Meetings A reader emailed us after our last issue to ask why we haven’t been covering the Cost-Basis Reporting scene…after lots of earlier coverage, where we correctly predicted that there was absolutely no way it could be enforced...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.