Law360, New York (January 21, 2016, 9:38 PM EST) -- Recently, our client, a New York Stock Exchange-listed publicly traded firm (the "Company"), successfully defended against a proxy contest brought by an activist fund that in the first part of this year acquired a 5.5 percent stake in the Company. Following on earlier indications that it would do so, the fund notified the Company in September that it intended to nominate six individuals for election to the seven-member board of directors at the 2015 annual meeting of stockholders to be held in November. At the meeting, stockholders elected all seven incumbent director nominees and flatly rejected all of the fund's six nominees, despite Institutional Shareholder Services' recommendation in favor of three of the fund's nominees and Proxy Mosaic's recommendation in favor of all six of the fund's nominees. These results offer key lessons to companies under attack by dissidents, notwithstanding strong activist pressure with backing from ISS or other proxy advisers....