proxy fight
- noun
- /ˈprɒksi faɪt/
- Literature
- A proxy fight led to three Air Product nominees being elected minority Airgas directors, but surprisingly, the Air Products nominees then concluded that the $70 offer proffered by their nominator was inadequate.
- launched a proxy fight
- waged a proxy fight
- proxy fight to oust
Examples
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Hostile tender offers are more frequent, as are solicitations of public shareholders in proxy fights.
Academic text (1998) -
We don't get too many of these in our industry, and Yahoo is actually set up poorly to defend against a proxy fight, since everyone comes up for election at once.
Blog text (10) -
This proxy fight, however, polarized Afghanistan and brewed further Pakistan-Iran mistrust.
Academic text (2009) -
We've initiated a takeover of Davenport Enterprises... in a proxy fight for the Pemrose Corporation.
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Frustrated with the company's direction, he initiated a proxy fight to change the board members.
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After months of disputes, shareholders organized a proxy fight to gain control over the company's management.
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To challenge the current leadership, the investor decided to pursue a proxy fight during the annual meeting.
Synonyms
Gaining control of a company by buying its shares or merging with it
One company buys another company even though its managers say no
An offer to buy enough shares in a company to gain control
An effort to gain control of a company by buying enough shares
How Serious
Surface Forms
Morphology
The components 'proxy' (someone acting on another's behalf) and 'fight' (a conflict) transparently signal a conflict carried out by representatives, so a learner could infer a general sense of a dispute fought via proxies. However, the specific corporate-governance sense — shareholders mounting a campaign to win votes and replace a board — is specialized and not fully predictable from the constituents alone, making the expression only partially transparent.
Etymology
The noun proxy fight comes from company voting. A proxy is a paper that lets one person 'vote' for another, and rival groups try to collect those papers in a fight to get 'control' of the company, so the phrase means an attempt to win enough shareholder votes to replace a company's management.