Tampa Tribune – Yahoo is recounting the shareholder vote for its board of directors after discovering that a tabulating firm failed to register the opposition of a major investor.
The revision won’t change the outcome of Friday’s election, which retained Yahoo’s incumbent directors despite shareholder anger about the board’s handling of a now-withdrawn $47.5 billion takeover bid from Microsoft Corp.
However, the change will add a little more punch to the protest against the Yahoo board. The directors re-elected last week had been supported by at least 78 percent of the votes cast, based on the original results.
"It’s important for Yahoo’s board to understand there is still pressure on them," said Eric Jackson, a hedge fund manager who represents a group of stockholders with about 3.2 million Yahoo shares. "I thought Yahoo’s board was kind of let off the hook last week when they didn’t really deserve to be."
Capital Research Global Investors, which owns a 6.2 percent stake in Yahoo, lodged the inquiry Monday that resulted in the election recount. Convinced that its opposition to Yahoo’s board wasn’t reflected in last week’s vote, Capital Research demanded an audit from Broadridge Financial Solutions, the processing firm responsible for casting its ballot.
