Okapi Partners, a proxy solicitation and investor response specialist, has hired Jason Alexander to be its new managing director as the firm continues to expand.
Alexander will focus on the company’s corporate clients and their investor response campaigns. Before joining Okapi Partners, he spent 18 years at Georgeson, a rival proxy solicitation firm, where he worked on transactions involving about 400 domestic, multinational and Canadian companies across several business sectors.
‘Jason brings experience working with hundreds of companies across sectors on a wide variety of corporate governance and investor response issues,’ says Bruce Goldfarb, president and CEO of Okapi Partners. The firm will keep hunting for ‘talented professionals’ as it continues to grow, he adds.
The company launched in 2008 and has grown rapidly since then. In 2015 it advised more activist investors than any other proxy firm, according to a Thomson Reuters Global Shareholder Activism Scorecard.
Last year saw the highest number of shareholder activist campaigns on record: 507, up 73.6 percent on 2014, the Thomson Reuters report says.
In an interview with IR Magazine in February, Goldfarb predicted the overall rise in activism would continue, particularly if volatile markets continue.
