Yahoo! shareholder seeks four seats on board

A US hedge fund with a large stake in Yahoo! laid claim Tuesday to four seats on the board, setting up a potential fight for control of the struggling Internet company. Third Point LLC, in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, said it is seeking a seat on the Yahoo! board for Third Point chief executive Daniel Loeb and three other directors of its choosing. Third Point welcomed the recent announcement that Yahoo! chairman Roy Bostock and three other long-time directors were leaving the board but expressed disappointment with two newly appointed directors. "The recently announced changes do not put (Yahoo!) on the right track towards maximizing shareholder value," said Third Point, which controls 5.56 percent of Yahoo!'s outstanding shares. "Installing the hand-picked choices of the current board does nothing to allay investor fears that Yahoo! is poised to repeat the errors of its past," the hedge fund said. Third Point said "new outside nominees from relevant financial and business backgrounds" were needed and proposed its own slate. Besides Loeb, Third Point said it will nominate Harry Wilson, Michael Wolf and Jeffrey Zucker for election at the next Yahoo! annual meeting. Wilson, a former adviser to the US Treasury Department, currently heads Maeva Group, a corporate turnaround boutique. Wolf is the chief executive of Activate, a strategy consulting firm, and former president and chief operating officer of MTV Networks. Zucker is the former chief executive of entertainment giant NBC Universal. Third Point expressed concern over the board's strategic emphasis on the technology aspects of Yahoo! "at the expense of advertising and media," which accounts for most of the company's revenue. "The reluctance of the board to prioritize shareholder value to date -- evidenced by years of deferring and delaying comprehensive strategic initiatives and missing out on myriad accretive transactions and strategic opportunities -- will no longer be tolerated or endorsed by investors," Third Point said. The Third Point filing came just hours after reports of the collapse of talks aimed at selling Yahoo!'s Asian assets. Yahoo! owns around 40 percent of Chinese online commerce giant Alibaba and also has a stake in Yahoo! Japan. Alibaba has expressed interest in buying back the stake but Dow Jones-owned technology blog AllThingsD said the talks have hit an impasse over structuring the deal in a way that would let Yahoo! save over $4 billion in US taxes. Once seen as the Internet's leading light, Yahoo! has struggled in recent years to build a strongly profitable, growing business out of its huge Web presence and global audience. Yahoo! shares lost 4.68 percent on Wall Street on Tuesday to close at $15.37.