Patti Hart, the CEO of International Game Technology, and Brad Smith, the president and CEO of Intuit, now have ties to Yahoo, too. Yesterday, Yahoo’s shareholders effectively welcomed these individuals to the company by electing them to its board of directors.
Hart and Smith are replacing John Chapple and Ronald Burkle, who didn’t seek reelection. And since Chapple came aboard as part of Carl Icahn’s attempt to take over Yahoo, this development should represent something of a return to normality.
Roy Bostock, the chairman of Yahoo’s board of directors, was certainly quick to applaud the move and welcome the new members. "Both Brad and Patti are tremendous additions to the Yahoo! Board of Directors and bring a wealth of expertise," he said in a statement.
Bostock then continued, "We look forward to leveraging Brad’s extensive experience with consumer products and the distribution of large scale software solutions over the Internet, and Patti’s deep leadership experience in Internet and technology companies as well as her public company board work."
Interestingly, no specific mention was made of the Microsoft deal, which is the biggest thing on Yahoo’s plate. But again, it’s unlikely that anyone would try to alter or derail the arrangement. The omission was probably more of an attempt to focus on Yahoo’s strengths as an independent company.
Yahoo’s stock is down 1.08 percent so far this morning, by the way, but Google, Microsoft, the Dow, and the Nasdaq are all in the red, as well.