14 DAY TRIAL // The investors/directors' annual meeting at Yahoo! didn't bring any changes in the board of directors. Despite the fact that some of the officials who played an important role in the rejection of the Microsoft proposal were criticized by investors, they still got an average of 80% positive votes.
This caught the attention of the Capital Research & Management investors, who own 6.5% of the Yahoo! shares. These people, who put most of their money in Yahoo! stock, had a negative attitude towards the current board of directors, both during the negotiations with the Redmond software maker and after the deal failed to go through. Like many other investors, the CR&M reps also stated their belief that a partnership with Microsoft, if a complete acquisition was not possible, would bring about only benefits.
However, at the annual vote, all the previously voiced negative thoughts failed to materialize into something concrete. Only two of the eight executives added up less than 80% of the total votes. The number of positive votes actually exceeded that of last year, which, naturally, gave room for speculation with the skeptics. The CR&M investors, for instance, said that a third party organization was necessary in order to verify the results of the elections. Their strongest argument was that, if so many were not in agreement with the current politics of the company imposed by Yang, Bostock, and other officials, this should have been reflected in their votes.
"The independent inspector of elections certified the results of the election and Yahoo! accurately announced those results. Yahoo! did not participate in the execution of the votes and was not a party to any errors which may have been made either by a voting institution or a proxy processing intermediary acting on behalf of banks, brokers and institutions." said a spokesman of Yahoo! to "All Things Digital".
The other branch of the company, Capital World Investors, which owns 9.8% of the Yahoo! shares, did not show any concern regarding the verity of the electoral results.