Identifying proxy issuers and bonds is a critical but largely manual step in illiquid corporate bond pricing, requiring analysts to navigate sparse public information and inconsistent industry signals. We present a modular pipeline for proxy retrieval that integrates issuer profiling with hierarchical industry classification and multi-stage retrieval over issuers. We evaluate alternative design choices across hierarchical classification and reranking stages to understand how structured representations and industry-aware signals influence performance. Experiments on a large internal dataset show that domain-adapted embeddings and explicit industry hierarchy signals are primary drivers of quality across stages. The evaluated system produces issuer-level proxy shortlists rather than final bond prices. Pilot deployment experience highlights the value of modular, cost-aware designs for robust proxy retrieval in enterprise settings.