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Valleywag
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Roy Bostock
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exits
Yahoo recount could threaten Yang, Bostock board seats
Unbelievably, the firm which counted shareholder votes for Yahoo omitted tens of millions of shares voted by dissident shareholder Capital Research & Management — and badly skewed the result. Yahoo calls it a "tabulation error." If you can call shifting 200 million votes from the "no" column to the "yes column", then sure. Call it whatever — it's actually Jerry Yang's death knell. The corrected total more than doubles the percentage of shareholders who withheld their votes from Yang, from 14.6 percent to 33.7 percent. Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock went from 20.5 percent withheld to 39.5 percent. At those levels of withheld votes, there is ample precedent for them to step down. More »
corporate governance
Nearly 1 in 5 Yahoo investors followed Valleywag's voting instructions
There's some kerfuffle about the voting in Yahoo's board election — something to do with whether some large investor voted or not. We don't care! What really pleases us is that the four board members we suggested get the boot — Roy Bostock, Art Kern, Ron Burkle, and Gary Wilson — scored the lowest in the vote. More »
yahoo
Carl Icahn suddenly decides he doesn't want to create a scene
Now that corporate raider Carl Icahn has been mollified with a seat on Yahoo's board, he's all about keeping a low profile. On his blog, the Icahn report, he says he will not be appearing the Yahoo shareholder meeting: "The proxy fight is over and it will not do shareholders or Yahoo any good to have the annual meeting turn into a media event for no purpose." Icahn then proceeds to complain about evil institutional investors and how because of them he's stuck with a minority position, so now he's hoping for a "beautiful friendship" and "look(s) forward to working harmoniously with the new board of Yahoo." While CEO Jerry Yang and chairman Roy Bostock must be happy about Icahn's attitude upgrade, I already miss the cranky curmedgeon version. (Photo by Getty/Michael Nagle)
eric jackson
Yahoo shareholders still planning rowdy annual meeting
Major Yahoo shareholders still want blood from CEO Jerry Yang, chairman Roy Bostock and director Ron Burkle, whom they hold responsible for botching negotiations with Microsoft. BoomTown's Kara Swisher predicts that at least one large fund manager will refuse to vote for their reelection to Yahoo's board during the company's annual meeting, August 1. Activist investor and president of Ironfire Capital Eric Jackson wants to take it further. More »
yahoo raid
Bostock and Yang's memo: "Carl Icahn-Microsoft alliance will destroy stockholder value"
In a memo filed with the SEC, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock made what we can only hope will be their final case to Yahoo shareholders as to why they should vote against Carl Icahn's alternative board at the company's August 1 annual meeting. (While Yang also signed the memo, you can tell Bostock's actually the one who wrote it, because it uses capital letters.) Their key points:- Yahoo will sell if Microsoft makes a $33 offer.
- Yahoo will sell just its search if Microsoft makes an off ther that "provides real value to our stockholders and resolves the substantial execution and operational risks associated with the separation of our search and display businesses."
- "Mr. Icahn can’t make up his mind about what he thinks will work for Yahoo!" Mostly because he's just in this for a quick buck.
- "Vote your WHITE Proxy Card"
quotable
Bostock: Why can't Microsoft be more like InBev?
Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock says that if Microsoft had handled itself the way InBev did, buying Anheuser-Busch for $52 billion even after A-B rejected an initial offer, Yahoo and Microsoft would probably be one company by now. "InBev was a classic, perfectly managed takeover," said Bostock. More »
nerdfight
Yang and Bostock can't agree on whether to sell Yahoo search
Do Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock disagree on whether Yahoo should ever sell its search business to Microsoft? Citing several sources, BoomTown's Kara Swisher says she knows what Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang wants, period: More »
yahoo raid
Icahn, Microsoft say Bostock twisted facts about weekend negotiations
In a letter to Yahoo shareholders, corporate raider Carl Icahn writes that he's never seen a company "distort, omit and twist" facts quite the way Yahoo did in a statement the company released Saturday night. Yahoo said it had rejected Microsoft's latest offer to buy Yahoo's search business. In the statement, Yahoo said Microsoft made an ultimatum and gave Yahoo only 24 hours to accept or reject the deal. Naturally, Microsoft agrees with Icahn's assement. In a release titled "Microsoft Sets the Record Straight," Microsoft says that it only proposed a new search deal after Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock called Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and asked for one. Microsoft says it worked a proposal up by late Friday and sent it, asking Yahoo to confirm in 24 hours whether or not the proposal was "sufficient to form the basis for the parties to engage in negotiations over the weekend on a letter of intent and more detailed term sheets." "This discussion," reads Microsoft's statement, "has been mischaracterized as a take it or leave it ultimatum, rather than a timetable in order to move forward to intensive negotiations." Yeah, we're lost, too. Microsoft's full statement, below. More »
yahoo raid
