After all the brouhaha over whether Microsoft and Yahoo would merge, and whether Carl Icahn would move in for a takeover, the company’s annual meeting on Friday ended up being rather anticlimactic. As the Associated Press described it, “a subdued crowd of shareholders raised few questions about the directors’ rejection of Microsoft Corp.’s $47.5 billion takeover bid.”
After Yahoo’s leadership spent more than an hour defending its handling of the now-withdrawn offer, the company fielded just nine questions from shareholders for about 35 minutes before abruptly adjourning the meeting.
C-Net’s Charles Cooper, who was in attendance, seemed to think the shareholders’ time was long enough, as persons he called “nut jobs” stepped to the microphone. “Hard as it is to acknowledge,” Cooper wrote, “I actually felt sorry for Yahoo’s board as it had to feign interest.”
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