Proxy Surprise: Cisco Re-Nominates Jerry Yang To Board (CSCO, YHOO, MSFT)

Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) is doing something which we thought might not occur.  In the full proxy materials for the annual shareholder meeting, the company has re-nominated Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) CEO Jerry Yang to its board of directors.  We first pondered whether Cisco Systems would want to keep Yang on its board over the summer because of the failed Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) merger mostly being pinned on him. Yang surely knows much about the Internet and you know his contacts are wide and deep. It isn’t anything personal, but being pegged as the destroyer of that much shareholder value can impact your standing at other public companies.  This re-nomination may not be a surprise to some, but we thought there would be a real chance that Yang would be asked to not stand for re-election. 

It will be interesting to see what the independent proxy advisory firms recommend as this meeting gets closer.  Half of our list of CEO’s who need to go in 2008 have gone.

Jon C. Ogg
September 25, 2008