14 DAY TRIAL // All of the 8 executives who signed up for a new commission in Yahoo!'s board of directors were reelected yesterday. Although this year's elections were regarded with great uncertainty, as stockholders could have chosen to dismiss the team that rejected a promising offer from Microsoft, everything turned out fine for the board.
Roy Bostock, Yahoo! chairman, and Arthur Kern, Yahoo! executive since 1996, were most likely to consider the elections nail-biting, because they were the only ones who did not receive a full 80% of the stockholders' votes. Brostock only got 79.5% pros of the total votes for him, while Kern received only 77.9% votes in his favor.
Jerry Young, Yahoo! CEO, who was considered the main actor of the business with Microsoft, had almost no reason to worry, with 85.4% positive votes. "We are at a unique point in our history, where we have the eyes of the world focused on our Company and tracking our performance. We are redoubling our commitment to driving sustained, profitable growth for our stockholders." he said, aware of the fact that he and his renewed team have to make an all-out effort to banish all thoughts about how it would have been if the company accepted Microsoft's offer.
Carl Icahn, the investor who brought a storm cloud upon the company when he decided to remove all the current board of directors and bring his men in, was not even present at the annual stockholders' meeting, although after a cease fire with Yang and his affiliates, he was assured that he would have a chair in the executive board. As the stockholders voted for the expansion of the board with two more men, Icahn can now bring in other two persons to be responsible for Yahoo!'s fate. The investor will occupy the place left vacant by Robert Kotick, who bowed out of the company.
Some of the investors complained that the time allocated to questions and answers was too short, as the board took too long to explain all the insides of the Microsoft story.