What could have been a nasty Yahoo shareholder uprising if activist billionaire shareholder Carl Icahn had been present actually turned out to be a rather docile gathering of business folks at the company's annual conference here at the Fairmont Hotel Aug. 1. Icahn, who owns about $1 billion worth of Yahoo stock—almost 5 percent of the company—and who tried to orchestrate a Microsoft takeover over a six-month period, met with key executives two weeks ago, agreed on a temporary settlement and decided not to attend the meeting, to the disappointment of many shareholders who see him as their de facto leader.
Embattled Yahoo CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang and board chairman Roy Bostock both retained their positions in the Yahoo hierarchy—and, surprisingly, by much larger mandates than in the 2007 vote. After enduring a 34 percent "no" vote last year, Bostock received only a 20.5 "withholding support" vote this time, while only 14.6 percent of shareholders withheld their support for Yang, who scored 30 percent "against" in 2007. Longtime board member Arthur Kern had the harshest vote on Friday with 22 percent against him. More than 75 percent of the company's 1,381,008,701 outstanding shares were represented at the meeting, either in person or online.
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