Shareholders vote to let Yahoo Yang keep his job ... just

Two-thirds vote to support CEO

6 August 2008 10:55 GMT / By Katie Scott

The details are now coming through from Yahoo's AGM, and they reveal exactly how close the company's top management came to losing their jobs.

Although the Yahoo board had acted weeks previously to placate one of their most vocal dissenting shareholders - Carl Icahn - it seems there will still plenty with money invested who did not approve of how Yahoo had handled Microsoft's two takeover bids.

Yahoo has released a recount of the votes of confidence in CEO Jerry Yang, and it seems 33.7% of votes withheld for Yang, who is the company's co-founder, with 66.3% in favour of him remaining on its board.

The initial tally that Yahoo revealed said that 85% of shareholders had voted to keep Yang.

But Yahoo has now admitted that there was a discrepancy in the vote count.

Corporate Election Services, the company's inspector of elections, informed Yahoo that Broadridge Financial Solutions, a proxy voting intermediary for major investors, had made significant errors.

But, despite the errors, Yang and other key board members faced a drumming.

Three other directors also had strong protest votes, with nearly 40% of votes withheld for chairman Bostock, 38% withheld for director Ron Burkle and 32% withheld for Arthur Kern.

A fifth board member, Gary Wilson, the former chairman of Northwest Airlines, had 28% of votes on his reelection withheld, while the remaining four board members still have strong shareholder support.