Veteran retailer Gerry Harvey branded proxy advisers "a sore on corporate Australia" and accused them of being more focused on ticking boxes than making shareholders money.
Mr Harvey said the advisers, who represented the votes of large superannuation funds and fund managers in public companies, were largely "unqualified" and didn't understand how to run a successful business. 
A high proportion of independent directors on a board, one of the key focuses for the proxy adviser firms, was no guarantee of shareholder returns, he said.
"Why don't they come out and find out how I run the place and have a look at where I am.
"The problem is these proxy advisers are not qualified to be proxy advisers. I don't think I've ever talked to one.
"They've never worked in a public company. They've never been down into the bowels of a public company. They're theorists and then they have the hide to take money off people."
Three-quarters of Harvey Norman shareholders voted against the retailer's executive pay regime at the 2014 annual meeting. However, the protest vote was much lower in 2015.
Mr Harvey, who owns about 30 per cent of Harvey Norman, said only 5 per cent of voters took issue with executive pay in 2015, which he said was among the lowest of ASX 100 companies.
Premier Investments chairman Solomon Lew lashed out at the proxy advisers at the company's annual meeting last week for voting against its executive pay scheme and chief executive Mark McInnes' generous cash bonus triggered a first strike.
Mr Lew said the proxy advisers were not the buyers of the stock and Premier's large shareholders were very supportive and voted in favour of the remuneration report.
Vas Kolesnikoff heads research for the Australian and New Zealand operation of proxy adviser Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS). He dismissed criticism the proxy advisers didn't meet company executives or take the time to understand their businesses, saying he had met most of the ASX 200 companies in 2015.
"I had a couple of meetings with companies that had quite material issues and they just didn't raise them," he said. "I say to companies, 'Have a look at our policies - they are on our website, publicly disclosed - and then come and talk to us regarding our policies as they apply to your company and any deviation therefrom'."
He said it was easy for companies to hit out at proxy advisers over issues like executive pay but ISS had a database of information on executive pay, which meant it could benchmark companies against their sector and the market.
As an example, he said he spoke to every one of the big four banks, which all had different pay schemes for their chief executives but they were all roughly equivalent.
"Strangely enough . . . they all come in at roughly $11 million irrespective of performance," he said.