Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been re-elected to the Walt Disney Company Board of Directors, rejecting the views of proxy advisers who say health issues may impair his ability to serve, reports “Bloomberg” (http://macte.ch/xXzZm).
Jobs, 56, was re-elected with 12 other nominees at the shareholder meeting today in Salt Lake City, with 74% of the votes cast backing the group, according to a preliminary count. The Apple executive, absent from the meeting, owns 7.3% of Disney and is the largest shareholder.
The AFL-CIO, which holds about 3.8 million Disney shares, opposed Jobs’ reelection. The group said Jobs’ poor health, plus his job as CEO of Apple, make him a bad choice for Disney’s board.
Also, the Institutional Shareholder Services, an institutional investment group, also questioned Jobs’s re-election to the Disney board because of his health. ISS says that Jobs has attended less than 75% of board meetings in the last three years, and wondered if Jobs should be reelected. ISS stopped short of rejecting Jobs but said shareholders deserve greater disclosure about his ability to function as a director.