Fight for control over Yahoo’s board begins

Rebellious Yahoo investors seeking to oust CEO Marissa Mayer and hasten a sale of the troubled search pioneer moved on Thursday to replace the company’s entire board, setting up a showdown at the annual shareholders meeting this summer. Starboard Value, a New York hedge fund, nominated nine members to Yahoo’s board on Thursday, picking executives with experience in media and technology. [...] Starboard’s CEO Jeffrey Smith pointed out in a letter to Yahoo shareholders on Thursday that as of March 8, Verizon’s chief financial officer said his company had not yet had discussions with the tech giant. “These issues should be troubling to shareholders, and also cast doubts for prospective buyers of the Core Business as to whether the process is genuine and whether they should commit the time and resources to evaluating a bid and making a proposal,” Smith wrote in the letter. “This is why we believe it is critical to elect a new Board that would provide much-needed credibility to a process that has been publicly criticized repeatedly for being too slow, fraught with conflicts of interest, and very difficult for highly qualified and motivated strategic and financial buyers to access much needed diligence information,” he wrote. Starboard said its candidates have skills “spanning finance, operations, industry knowledge, mergers and acquisitions expertise, board governance and oversight.” Braham has had experience being “directly involved in negotiating or executing” more than 100 merger and acquisition deals in the tech industry. Debra Janssen, chief operating officer of regional bank holding company Bankers Trust and former CEO of CDS Global (a division of Hearst Corp., the Chronicle’s parent company).