Today’s lesson is don’t mess with Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) management. Cupertino, California-based Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is holding its annual shareholders meeting today, and it was just announced that the iPhone maker’s shareholders approved all the company’s proposals and rejected all shareholder proposals that the tech giant’s board of directors opposed.
Management proposals approved
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) shareholders voted to re-elect its entire BoD, including CEO Tim Cook; Chairman Arthur Levinson; William Campbell; Mickey Drexler; Bob Iger; Andrea Jung; former Vice President Al Gore; and Ronald Sugar.
Investors also voted to approve changes to Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s policy for awarding stock to employees. The revised plan provides more shares to issue to its workers, largely for those in “those positions deemed critical to the company’s future success, individuals whose personal performance makes them highly valuable to the company, and essential new hires,” according to the recent proxy filing.
Shareholders furthermore voted to approve a proposal backed by Apple to end the BoD’s “blank check” authority to issue preferred stock. That potentially dangerous authority had been granted to the board last year, when the company was fighting off activist David Einhorn’s effort to get Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) to issue a new class of preferred shares paying a regular dividend.
Icahn shareholder proposal rejected
As expected, the “withdrawn” shareholder proposal from activist investor Carl Icahn was also rejected. Icahn had been pressing CEO Cook and the Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) board of directors to buy back more shares.
After a statement from Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) regarding large stock buybacks earlier this month, Icahn dropped a plan to force a vote over the issue. He issued a statement saying he was “satisfied” that Cook that Apple had repurchased $14 billion of its own shares in the two weeks, making the total amount of stock bought back by the company over the last 12 months to more than $40 billion.
