Yang, Bostock Not as Popular as They Thought They Were

Sam Gustin wonders how the Yahoo shareholder tally could possibly have been this screwed up, given that the proxy vote was the most anticipated and scrutinized (supposedly) of the year.

I also find it hard to believe that no one at Yahoo might have thought the vote tally from last Friday's shareholder meeting seemed a little...off. And if someone did notice, one wonders whether the tally would ever have been corrected had Capital Research Global Investors not asked its vote-counter to check their figures.

As it turns out, the numbers were more than "a little" off. In fact, the percentage of shareholders voicing displeasure with Jerry Yang and Roy Bostock was twice what was initially reported.

Sure, you might say, this doesn't change the final result, and just shows that Yang and Bostock are even less popular than previously thought. Newsflash.

But this incident, aside from being yet another black eye for Yahoo, raises some troubling questions:

How did no one at Yahoo notice that tens of millions of votes appeared to be missing from the final tally?

Didn't the company feel it appropriate to do even the most cursory due diligence on the results -- like say, check them against common sense -- given that the future of Yahoo's board was at stake?

Perhaps Yahoo felt the results were "too good to check." Besides, Yahoo and the large shareholders hired outside companies to do such diligence for them. So much for that.

Finally, Did no one at Yahoo question whether the "yes" tallies for Yang and Bostock seemed "a little" high, given widespread investor displeasure over the company's handling of Microsoft's bid?

In the new tally, Yang's "withheld" votes jumped from 14.6 percent to 33.7 percent, while Bostock's "withheld" votes rose from 20.5 percent to 39.5 percent.

In other words, one third of shareholders withheld their support for Yang, while four in ten shareholders shunned Bostock.

Given such a deep level of investor dissatisfaction with Yang and Bostock, they will no doubt face renewed pressure to either perform, or step aside.

The corrected numbers and more, in Yahoo's press release.

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Laura Rich is a co-founder of Recessionwire, which provides news, advice, perspective and humor about the recession and the recovery.