Yahoo has announced that one of its board members, former Nextel CEO John Chapple, will not stand for re-election at its 2010 annual stockholders’ meeting. Chapple, who was a director at Yahoo since August 2008, is said to want to “devote more time to his other business interests” instead.
The real reason is that Chapple is a close associate of Carl Icahn, who resigned from Yahoo’s board in October 2009 after basically wrestling his way into the company’s top management team back in July 2008 (remember the Microsoft saga?). With him gone from the Yahoo board, there really wasn’t much reason for Chapple to stick around.
John Chapple is President of equity firm Hawkeye Investments. Prior to forming Hawkeye, he served as President, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Nextel Partners from January 1998 to June 2006, when the company was purchased by Sprint. Chapple serves on the board of directors of several telecommunications companies: Cbeyond, Leap Wireless International and privately held companies Seamobile Enterprises and Telesphere Networks.
With him resigning from Yahoo’s board, the only other person from the Icahn posse left is Frank Biondi, former Chairman and CEO of Universal Studios and Viacom before that.
I wouldn’t bet on him sticking around much longer either, though.