Corporate Governance Spreads To Yahoo!, Green Mountain, Chesapeake

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

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Corporate governance, which is a subject often debated but usually in abstract, has moved to the front pages. Patti Hart, the Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) director who was in charge of the search for new CEO Scott Thompson, will leave the board. Thompson has a misleading section in his CV which showed he has a degree he does not. A special committee of Yahoo! directors, all of whom were added this year, will decide whether Thompson should be fired.

On the same day that Hart left, the chairman and founder of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (NASDAQ: GMCR) lost his job at the head of the board. His fellow board members forced Robert Stiller step down because he made stock sales during a period when the activity was prohibited. Stiller had to make the sales. When the firm’s stock dropped almost 50%, he received margin calls because of borrowing against the shares. William Davis, the lead director, was kicked out of his job because of stock sales. Both men will stay on the board, but will not be  members of any committees.

The same day that both the Yahoo! and Green Mountain changes were disclosed, Reuters produced evidence that the board of embattled Chesapeake Energy(NYSE: CHK)  allowed a large number of private plane flights by directors and officers. This comes on top of allegations of self-dealing by CEO Aubrey McClendon, who personally invested in a number of wells drilled by Chesapeake.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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