Yang Support Miscalculated

Yahoo said that a greater number of shareholder votes were cast opposing the reelection of Jerry Yang and other directors than reported. The company acknowledged that it made a mistake processing the multiple shareholder votes and mishandled those of one large investor, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The resulting vote indicated that the original 85 percent overestimated Yang’s support. Yang received 66 percent of supporting votes and Roy Bostock received a 60 percent favorable vote, down from 80 percent. Yahoo director Rob Burkle’s share fell to 62 percent of votes cast from the original 81 percent, according to WSJ.

Despite the counting errors, the outcome of Friday’s meeting did not change as all directors were reelected. Broadridge Financial Solutions, which was responsible for sending Capital Research Global Investors’ the votes to be counted, was responsible for the mistake. Capital Research, a critic of the Yahoo’s board decision to reject Microsoft’s offer, owns approximately 6 percent of Yahoo.

Chuck Callan, senior vice president of regulatory affairs at Broadridge, said a printout sent to the voting tabulator mistakenly cut off the first digit of the number of shares the investor wanted to withhold from certain directors, according to the WSJ. An isolated incident, at least 100 million shares were withheld. Broadridge, which processes votes for 14,000 meetings a year, found that no other meetings within the past 18 months were involved and the problem has been resolved.

In a Reuters blog posting, the question of Yang’s decision to give Carl Icahn a board seat to reinforce Yang’s position in the company is under question. Despite his efforts to gain support of shareholders, Yang saw 33.7 percent of votes withheld for Yang. The opposition to his reappointment is more than twice than his first disputed count.

The recount is also spotlighting whether such an embarrassment is a direct correlation to Yang’s leadership. After Yahoo settled a proxy fight with Icahn, the billionaire investor and two members of his proposed slate seats were given a place on an expanded board of 11 members instead of the previous nine, according to Reuters.