Yahoo (YHOO) on Tuesday disclosed that CEO Jerry Yang and other directors were re-elected last week to its board with far fewer votes than previously thought.
On Tuesday, Yahoo said it learned that Broadridge Financial Services, a proxy accounting firm that handles submitting votes for major shareholders, forgot to include millions of votes in its tally. Five of Yahoo's nine incumbents received a much lower margin of approval after votes from Yahoo's largest institutional shareholders, Capital World Investors and Capital Research Global Investors, were belatedly added.
Capital Group on Monday had asked Broadridge re-examine the votes. Broadridge subsequently found it had failed to include 200 million votes from the Capital Group that were withheld for Roy Bostock, Ron Burkle and Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, and 100 million votes withheld for Arthur Kern and Gary Wilson. Instead of an 85.4% shareholder approval, Yang actually received 66% of votes, and Yahoo chairman Bostock had 60% as opposed to 79.5% that was originally reported Friday. Yahoo's nine directors were running uncontested.
In a statement, Yahoo blamed Broadridge's mistake on a "truncation error" that resulted when share numbers exceeded eight digits.
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Read about the most vocal dissenter -- who didn't bother to show up to the board meeting: