Offerings
Consult
Connect with our subject matter experts to address and improve your overall workflow, timeline and ability to connect more favorably with your stakeholders.
Our goal is to help you create a more successful and cost-effective annual meeting. Get your free consultation.
Design
Collaborate with our Design Advisory team in a cover-to-cover review of your existing materials to incorporate best-in-class presentation elements to enhance communication with your shareholders – including a review and suggestions for your Proxy Statement, Environmental Impact Statement, ESG Report, Annual Report, and provide guidance on iXBRL tagging.
Produce and File
Create highly stylized shareholder communications with visually engaging graphics, delivered with speed and complete accuracy.
Seamlessly transition from composed document to iXBRL tagged EDGAR and print-ready output utilizing our proprietary technology platform.
Printing and Distribution
Minimize expense without compromising the quality of your printed materials.
Toppan Merrill’s print production teams are seasoned and experienced graphic arts professionals who will guide you with recommendations customized to meet your goals.
Proxy Process Consultation:
Improve your process, enhance
shareholder connectivity
During the most recent proxy season, companies that engaged Toppan Merrill consultation experts realized thousands of dollars of savings, while uncovering ways to upgrade their design and messaging to communicate a more engaging story.
This exclusive annual meeting and proxy process consultation focuses on five key areas that impact issuers each year: timeline, production and mailing, notice and access, vendor services and Environmental Impact Statement evaluation.
Our highly trained team of experts will review your documents and processes to show you exactly where you can save and make an even bigger impact.
- Is your timeline compressed?
- Do you know without exception you have the most cost-effective and efficient process for producing and disseminating your shareholder communications?
- Is notice and access the most cost-effective and efficient way to conduct shareholder communications?
- Are you aware that often, many of your vendors overlap in services?
- Are you trying to determine how to connect more favorably with your stakeholders and increase engagement, while being environmentally conscientious?
If any of these questions hit a nerve or made you pause to consider, our free consultation is right for you! Request your complimentary consultation.
Design: Proxy statement style guide
To meet shareholder demands, your annual meeting and proxy process needs to evolve to increase shareholder participation and effectively communicate corporate objectives and values. Whether it is the CD&A or Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) related topics such as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), Human Capital, or Climate Change, our design and advisory team presents solutions and best practices for proxy statements along with peer group comparisons to improve proxy presentation, messaging and effectiveness. Modernize your proxy content and design with first-rate document presentation, updated designs, and interactive web-based options.
Registrants are required to provide a table disclosing specific executive compensation and financial performance measures for the five most recently completed fiscal years, depending on their status.
Registrants must separately iXBRL tag each value disclosed in the table, block-text tag the footnote and relationship disclosure and tag specific data points within the footnotes to the table.
Produce and File
Creating annual shareholder meeting documents has never been easier. The entire annual meeting and proxy statement production process is seamlessly managed by the Toppan Merrill composition, filing, print and distribution experts. Our integrated workflows ensure projects are completed within required timelines and budgets. Our solutions include:
- Document content management
- Document formatting and graphic services
- Filing services including iXBRL tagging, EDGAR and SEDAR+
- Printing and distribution
File error-free with
Toppan Merrill Bridge™
Based on the Microsoft Office suite, Bridge delivers an intuitive and efficient method for corporate governance professionals to style and manage proxy statements, providing more control over the document workflow.
Create, manage and perfect disclosure content with speed and accuracy, then transmit outputs directly to global regulatory bodies.
Bridge is a single, integrated platform infused with 50+ years of financial and regulatory disclosure expertise.
On The Dot
Podcast: RILA Rulemaking: The Highs, The Lows, and The Unknown
On The Dot (Episode 7) – A conversation with Guy Stanzione discussing the highs, the lows, and questions to be resolved to ensure SEC compliance.
Updates and Insights
iXBRL tagging of cybersecurity disclosures in SEC filings enhances transparency
Jennifer Froberg – Sr SEC Product Specialist
Redefining proxy design: How W&T Offshore moved the needle as a finalist for the 2024 Best Proxy Statement (Small Cap) award
Mike Spelman
Why Notice and Access (N&A) can end up costing more — and yield lower voting results
Mike Spelman“The shareholder communications team conducted a peer group analysis for our company and discovered an inefficient proxy layout and suggested we embrace "plain English" content. By changing our layout and content, we've increased voter participation and created a lighter document which saved us $32,000 in production and mailing costs.”Assistant General Counsel Fortune 100 Media Company
Related Solutions
Regulated Communications
SEC Resources
Contact our team to get started.
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Have more questions?
Reduce complexity and get answers to some of our customers’ frequently asked questions.
See the full list of FAQsCorporate governance involves the processes, policies, guidelines and standards set by corporations to reference when managing and making formal decisions. Plus, it is a factor in helping a company avoid risk. There are seven characteristics of corporate governance often referenced: Discipline, transparency, independence, accountability, responsibility, fairness and social responsibility.
Corporate governance is also an important topic to include in shareholder communications. For example, risk management, diversity and human capital management are corporate governance topics frequently addressed in proxy statements. Additionally, shareholders remain keenly interested in corporate boardroom diversity, for reasons of both equity and performance. Including visuals such as iconography, infographics and pie charts can help represent the company’s position on these topics within the proxy. For support and additional information, explore our Annual Meeting and Proxy Solutions.
A proxy solicitor is a specialist firm hired to help issuers gather proxy votes. Issuers hire solicitors as an insurance policy to help drive shareholder voting for non-discretionary (non-routine) proposals, New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) regulatory changes regarding equity plans, and majority voting on director elections. Proxy Solicitors utilize shareholder lists to proactively contact shareholders to explain proposals and encourage voting. Ultimately, the solicitor’s job is to increase the shareholder vote. For support and additional information, explore our Annual Meeting and Proxy Solutions and the Toppan Merrill 2025 Proxy Style Guide.
Compensation Discussion and Analysis (CD&A) is a proxy statement component that covers the discussion of compensation philosophy, for example, pay-for-performance, performance metrics, and performance vesting equity. The CD&A shows an overview of the year‘s performance and compensation performance targets, and key compensation decisions made in the past year (i.e., salary changes, incentive plan changes). It also includes a compensation framework, including compensation policies/process and risk considerations, employment agreements, and compensation in comparison to peer group companies. For support and additional information, explore our Annual Meeting and Proxy Solutions.
SEC Form DEF 14A, also called a definitive proxy statement, is intended to furnish security holders with adequate information to be able to vote confidently at an upcoming shareholders’ meeting. Form DEF 14A is most commonly used with an annual meeting proxy and filed in advance of a company’s annual meeting. The statement must be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) by or on behalf of the firm soliciting shareholder votes.
Under The Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, Form DEF 14A ensures that shareholders receive crucial voting information including when and where a shareholder meeting will be held; voting information and procedures; revocability of proxies; procedure for submitting stockholder proposals; background on the company’s nominated directors; top shareholders and holding details; potential conflicts of interest among directors; board and executive compensation, with details including perquisites; audit fees and committee and other important details.
When a definitive proxy statement is distributed to shareholders, it’s also filed with the SEC. It becomes a public record, available for anyone to view, on the SEC’s EDGAR (Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval) computer system for the receipt, acceptance, review and dissemination of documents submitted in electronic format to the Commission. For support and additional information, explore our solutions for Annual Meeting and Proxy Solutions.