Yahoo's board emerged largely unscathed from the company's annual meeting as a subdued crowd of shareholders raised few questions about the directors' rejection of Microsoft's $47.5 billion takeover bid.

Some shareholders expressed displeasure by opposing the re-election of Yahoo's current directors, but the resistance wasn't as intense as last year, when three directors were rejected by more than 30% of the vote.

In this year's balloting, only two directors, chairman Roy Bostock and Arthur Kern, were opposed on ballots representing at least 20% of Yahoo shares. Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, who steered the Microsoft negotiations with Bostock, was approved by 85% of the votes cast.

Many investors had already made an emphatic statement about their feelings by dumping their holdings in Yahoo shares. The company's stock price has fallen by 31% since Microsoft withdrew a takeover offer of $33 per share in early May.

Much of the drama was drained from last week's meeting last month when Yahoo reached a truce with activist investor Carl Icahn, who had been campaigning to oust the company's entire board for spurning the Microsoft bid.

Icahn, who owns a 5% stake in Yahoo, will join the company's board next week and can't criticize his fellow directors as part his peace pact. He didn't attend the meeting.

Yahoo will add two other Icahn-endorsed candidates to the board by August 15. Former AOL CEO Jonathan Miller had been considered one of the leading candidates to fill the other seats, but he apparently will be precluded from doing so as part of a noncompete agreement that AOL's owner, Time Warner, plans to enforce.

The provisions preventing Miller from joining an AOL rival remain in effect through March 2009, Time Warner spokesman Keith Cocozza said

Source:AP News