shareholders

Sun Microsystems' largest shareholder, Southeastern Asset Management, has upped its stake and taken a more aggressive attitude toward its investment, indicating that it will take an active role in maximizing shareholder value through talks with management and third parties, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday.

Southeastern, an investment advisory service and self-described value investor in large-cap, mid-cap, and small-cap companies, increased its stake to 21.2 percent from its previous investment in September of 17.3 percent.

In noting the increased stake and change in its status as a passive investor to … Read more

Now the fireworks and fractiousness can officially move inside Yahoo: activist investor Carl Icahn is part of the Internet company's board.

Icahn had tried to take over the entire board in July, but settled for a seat of his own and for two of his allies. In a regulatory filing Wednesday, Yahoo said Icahn is officially on the board, replacing Robert Kotick as planned.

One of Icahn's first roles on the board will be to help pick the two allies who will join him. The new appointments are set to be announced by August 15, increasing Yahoo's … Read more

The shareholder approval ratings for Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang and Roy Bostock plunged Tuesday after Yahoo released new results that corrected a vote transmission error.

Shareholders unhappy with board members withheld their votes in the Friday election. In Yahoo's official voting tally released Friday, 14.6 percent of votes for Yang and 20.5 percent for Bostock were withheld.

But in the corrected results, Yang's withhold percentage rose to 33.7 percent and Bostock's to 39.6 percent, Yahoo said.

Update 2:09 p.m. PDT: Quantitatively, the change means nothing: "These errors did not … Read more

Yahoo said it plans to update a shareholder vote results after an error in transmission meant some dissatisfaction with Yahoo management wasn't reflected in Friday's board member election figures.

Capital Research Global Investors, suspecting an error in the Yahoo vote tally, said on Monday that it requested that the firm it uses to transmit the votes to Yahoo check its work to see if there was an error. On Tuesday, that firm, Broadridge Financial Solutions, said it found a "truncation error" that underreported how many votes were withheld for some board members.

Withholding votes in a … Read more

Maybe Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang didn't escape criticism from Friday's shareholder meeting so easily after all.

The percentage of Yahoo shareholders who withheld votes for Yang and Chairman Roy Bostock dropped from 2007 to 2008, Yahoo said after the meeting, apparently signifying a lesser level of disapproval. But Capital Research Global Investors, which at last count owns 6.2 percent of Yahoo stock, has requested that the company that transmitted its votes to Yahoo, Broadridge Financial Solutions, check its work.

"We asked Broadridge Financial to doublecheck the votes it transmitted to Yahoo on our behalf," … Read more

SAN JOSE, Calif.--Yahoo stuck to its script Friday, arguing at its annual shareholder meeting that it's poised for greater financial success, but at least some shareholders left unsatisfied with the performance by Chief Executive Jerry Yang and Chairman Roy Bostock.

"I like Jerry, but I think a new CEO is needed," said Eric Jackson of Ironfire Capital, which controls 3.2 million Yahoo shares, in an interview after the two-hour meeting here wound down. And that's not all--he also wants to see board members Bostock, Eric Hippeau, Arthur Kern, and Ron Burkle step down. And … Read more

Updated 1:51 p.m. PDT: Adds Microsoft statement and some investor comments from the presentation.

Yahoo investors came to the annual shareholders meeting Friday looking for answers on the failed bid by Microsoft.

And while Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock, speaking early during the meeting, covered a fair amount of ground on the long-running melodrama of Microsoft's buyout bid and subsequent developments, there were two things missing from his presentation.

One, how the company came to the conclusion that a $33 a share Microsoft buyout offer wasn't rich enough and why a counter of $37 a share was … Read more

SAN JOSE, Calif.--The Yahoo shareholders meeting here has commenced and adjourned. And CEO Jerry Yang and his board did end up getting an earful about the company's share price and its handling of Microsoft's attempted acquisition.

I blogged live from the meeting. We heard presentations from Yang, Chairman Roy Bostock, President Sue Decker, and CFO Blake Jorgensen, and then questions from shareholders. Here is a record of the live blog.

9:59 a.m. PDT: Just before the meeting is set to begin, the Fairmont Hotel ballroom is more empty than full. Perhaps Yahoo planned this when … Read more

Updated version, with rewrites throughout, of a story originally posted at 9:39 AM PDT.

Yahoo said Monday afternoon that it has not set a date for its shareholders meeting after all, contrary to the timetable that had been described in a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission two months ago.

In a letter dated Feb. 1, the same day that Microsoft announced its unsolicited bid for Yahoo, the Internet pioneer sent a letter to the SEC. The letter, from Yahoo's associate general counsel Christina Lai, asked the agency to clarify whether Yahoo had to include in … Read more