The shareholder meeting with Yahoo ended on a very low note given the very many reasons; from the conflicts with Icahn, the deal/no deal stories with Microsoft, Jerry Yang’s battles against the Icahn and Microsoft duo all the way to the climax of any chances of a deal between Yahoo and Microsoft. We thought that things would go quite for sometime at least but voila! Out comes more news and this time it’s about the error in reporting the ‘no’ votes cast against members of the Yahoo Board (we have Yahoo’s crash on profits to add more to shareholders dissatisfaction).
The new tally revealed a staggering difference in thee count of ‘dissatisfaction votes’ that were earlier reported in the shareholders meeting. The new numbers revealed that 33.7% votes were withheld from Yang (14.6% previously), 39.6% form the chairman Roy Bostock (p. 20.5%), Ronald W. Blurke got 37.9% no-vote (p. 18.8%), Arthur H.Kern 31.7% (p. 22.1%) and Fary L. Wilson 27.7% (p. 18.2%) as reported by the New York Times.
The new tally had been done after a brokerage services firm transmitted votes on behalf of some Yahoo shareholders and revealed that it had made an error that had resulted in the difference of votes that had been withheld from numerous directors. This resulted in almost 200 million votes that had been cast against these directors to be counted in their favor.
The re-examination came after Capital Research Global Investors (one of Yahoo’s largest shareholders) requested Broadridge to make a recount. This could have been largely due the discontent Gordon Crawford has with Yahoo’s management and board and his advise to withhold funds under his control from directors.
Now these new numbers ring more bells for Yahoo as an analyst with RBC Capital Markets, Ross Sandler said:
Sent a message to Yahoo management that it is still walking on eggshells,
And that Yahoo is still under immense pressure to capitalize on the error since the changes at present make no difference. But then we all know that this is going to come out any instant Yahoo’s board falters to satisfy the discontent shareholders.
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