You can’t help but think of Florida on this one.
Yahoo has revised the results from its annual meeting, posting new figures that show far less shareholder support for some of the key directors.
The culprit? A tabulation error on the part of Broadridge Financial Solutions, the firm that handled the proxy votes for Yahoo’s largest shareholder in this high-profile test of corporate confidence.
The recount follows the cry foul from Gordon Crawford, who leads Capital Research and Management Co. and has been an outspoken critic of Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and Chairman Roy Bostock for failing to consummate a sale to Microsoft.
A software glitch apparently counted Crawford’s votes for Bostock and Yang, when he had meant to withhold them.
The revised returns look very different.
Bostock only received 60.4 percent of the vote, in contrast to the 79.5 percent that had been previously reported. Support for Yang dropped from 85.4 percent to 66.3 percent.
All of the incumbent directors who were standing for reelection still won the contest, but Yahoo will no longer be able to claim the sweeping mandate that it had under the original count.
Eric Jackson, another major shareholder, called on Bostock and Yang to “do the honorable thing” and step down if they received only a faint show of confidence, as Jackson said they had last year. The narrow majority of revised figures look very similar to last year’s results.
The recount did not change the vote on any of other proposals considered at the meeting.
