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Yahoos Loser Board

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by Russ Mitchell
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Jun 26 2008 12:00am EDT

Yahoo's Loser Board

Russ Mitchell is not surprised. One way to compare the quality of Yahoo's board of directors to Microsoft's: look at the outside directors and the other public boards they sit on and see how they've performed. Take each company and compare its stock charts against the S&P 500 or the Nasdaq indexes, whichever is most relevant. Such analysis can be used only as a piece of evidence in determining a board member's quality; it hardly tells the whole story. But interesting evidence it is.

On the list below, a company that soundly beat the index over the past 12 months is a winner. A company that seriously lagged the index is a loser. A company that comes close to matching the index is neutral.
The tally:
Microsoft: Six winners, two losers.
Yahoo: Seven losers, two winners, one neutral.
MICROSOFT
James Cash
The Chubb Corp. WINNER
Wal-Mart WINNER
Phase Forward WINNER
Dina Dublon
Accenture LOSER
Pepsico WINNER
Raymond Gilmartin
General Mills WINNER
Charles Noski
Air Products and Chemicals WINNER
Helmut Penke
UBS LOSER
YAHOO
Ron Bostock
Northwest Airlines LOSER
Gary Wilson
Northwest Airlines LOSER
CB Richard Ellis Group LOSER
Ron Burkle
Occidental Petroleum WINNER
KB Home LOSER
Eric Hippeau
Starwood Hotels LOSER
Maggie Wilderotter
Citizen Communications LOSER
Xerox LOSER
Robert Kotich
Activision WINNER
Arthur Kern
Clear Channel NEUTRAL
The S&P over the past twelve months is down about 14%; the Nasdaq, about 7%.
Average out the Microsoft board's percentage point gains and losses, and they're down 4%; if you take out the one big loser, UBS, which was down 63%, the Microsoft average return is a positive 5.8%
Average out the Yahoo board's percentage point gain's and losses, and it's down 22.5%; if you take out the one big winner Activision, up about 90%, the average is a loss of 36%.

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