Yahoo! Withhold Vote Count from 2008 Annual Meeting
Here is the final vote count released by Yahoo! yesterday afternoon of the votes for the directors. Kudos to Yahoo! for releasing these numbers the day of the meeting. Last year, Yahoo! waited 7 weeks before releasing the numbers in the very back of their 10-Q.
As expected, the members of the Compensation Committee (Roy Bostock, Ron Burkle, and Art Kern) received a high number of "against" or "withhold" votes. Unexpected: the large number of votes cast against Gary Wilson.
It's also worth noting that only 75% of eligible votes were cast. This is an unusually low number. I would guess that several shareholders who voted for Icahn's gold proxy did not re-vote and that those votes were thrown out (as per Mike Callahan's comments at the meeting). Therefore, the "against" votes below are actually higher in terms of the percentage of votes cast.
I will comment more on the meeting in the coming days. For now, here are the numbers....
Director Shares For % For Shares Withheld % Withheld
Roy J. Bostock 832,023,657 79.5% 214,071,927 20.5%
Ronald W. Burkle 849,373,291 81.2% 196,722,293 18.8%
Eric Hippeau 948,862,579 90.7% 97,233,005 9.3%
Vyomesh Joshi 971,594,650 92.9% 74,500,934 7.1%
Arthur H. Kern 814,871,925 77.9% 231,223,659 22.1%
Robert A. Kotick 967,044,818 92.4% 79,050,766 7.6%
Mary Agnes Wilderotter 964,939,727 92.2% 81,155,857 7.8%
Gary L. Wilson 856,006,576 81.8% 190,089,008 18.2%
Jerry Yang 893,055,602 85.4% 153,039,982 14.6%
At the meeting, stockholders also ratified the appointment of the Company's independent registered public accounting firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, with 1,021,286,375 shares voting for, 9,952,603 shares voting against and 14,856,606 shares abstaining. Stockholders also voted to reject a pay-for-superior-performance proposal, with 339,808,082 shares voting for, 681,650,539 shares voting against and 24,636,963 shares abstaining. Stockholders also voted against a proposal relating to Internet censorship, with 54,531,125 shares voting for, 889,546,203 shares voting against and 102,018,256 shares abstaining. A proposal offered to amend Yahoo!'s Bylaws to establish a Board committee on human rights failed, with 41,874,370 shares voting for, 932,055,232 shares voting against and 72,165,982 shares abstaining.
Total shares represented at the meeting were 1,046,095,584, representing 75.8% of the 1,381,008,701 shares outstanding as of the record date, June 3, 2008.
