Technology

Yahoo! Brings Founder Back to Board

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Source: courtesy of Yahoo!
In a proxy filing Wednesday, Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) has nominated founder David Filo to the company’s board of directors. The company also nominated Charles Schwab, founder of financial services firm Charles Schwab Corp. (NYSE: SCHW), and Lee Scott, former CEO of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT), to its board.

Filo and Jerry Yang, Yahoo’s former CEO, founded the company in 1994, but Filo left the board in 1996. He has assumed an advisory role at the company since the hiring of Marissa Meyer in 2012 as Yang’s replacement.

Yahoo has some big-time decisions facing the company, none bigger than what to do with the expected profits from its investment in Chinese Internet firm Alibaba, which recently filed for an initial public offering (IPO). Yahoo holds a stake of about 24% in Alibaba, which could be worth up to $36 billion following the IPO.

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Schwab and Scott both have experience leading large companies, and that is the kind of experience that will be very valuable as Yahoo tries to return to growth. The company reported first-quarter earnings earlier this week, and the promise of more share buybacks sent shares up nearly 8% on Wednesday. Profit growth has been modest to nonexistent, and the company has said that it is planning to concentrate its efforts on streaming video in the near term.

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The annual shareholders meeting is scheduled for June 25, and that is when investors will get to vote on the slate of new board members. Retiring board members are John Hayes, chief marketing officer for American Express, Tribune Co. CEO Peter Ligouri and activist investor Daniel Loeb, who resigned last summer.

Yahoo shares opened trading Thursday at $36.27, in a 52-week range of $22.70 to $41.72.

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