Proxy sollicitors
A proxy solicitor is a specialist or company hired by shareholders of a company that searches for proxy voters to vote in place of shareholders. The aim is to collect a group of proxy voters to vote in line with the shareholders that hired the proxy solicitor.
Hiring the proxy sollicitor
An activist investor would need to contact dozens of individual shareholders, and keep track of the proxies that each shareholder submits. Proxy solicitors have the systems required to do this and have relationships with most of the largest institutional investors.
Hiring a proxy solicitor is often a last resort. Shareholders first try to have a constructive conversation with a company’s board. Hiring a proxy solicitor can be expensive, so it will mostly be done when chances of achieving the desired outcome are high.