Organizing Collective Shareholder Action Online: The Case of Eric Jackson & Co vs Yahoo!

I found this quite interesting. Eric Jackson, a Yahoo! shareholder with only 45 shares from Florida has to date organized a group of shareholders representing 911,666 Yahoo shares worth $29m to call for Terry Semel’s resignation.

Using community building tools available on the Internet, he as managed to bring together all these people from around the world and pieced together a “Plan B” outlining all the missteps under Terry Semel’s watch. He has since been covered by Business Week, Yahoo Finance and TechCrunch.

It’ll be interesting to see how Eric Jackson & Co conducts the traditional proxy fight using the tools of Web 2.0. I’m not sure if this is the first time someone has organized such a collective shareholder action against a company but this must be one of the most notable ones against a very global company. Can a man with 45 shares influence enough people to oust Terry Semel who has to date received a whopping $550m in total compensation to date?