Ron Sugar wins board member popularity contest

OK, weekend pop quiz! Quick, who's the most popular member of the Apple board with shareholders? Head-scratching allowed, coffee may be taken, think hard, no taking peeks at the illustration or headline here...Well, if you answered 'Steve Jobs', you're probably human. And if you're an anonymous financial institution you answered 'Ronald Sugar.'

Since anonymous financial institutions outweigh humans more than two-to-one when it comes to owning Apple shares, the most popular Apple director is, as reported by Fortune's Apple 2.0, Ronald Sugar. The former CEO of aerospace company Northrop Grumman joined Apple in November to replace Jerry York, who died last March and Google's Eric Schmidt, who left in 2009.

As you can see from the table taken from the SEC form 8-K filed last Thursday, Steve Jobs was re-elected to the board of Apple with nearly 3.5 million votes less than were cast for Ronald Sugar -- and that, as before, Andrea Jung was the least popular board member.

We probably shouldn't read too much into the voting -- 70% of Apple shares are held by financial institutions, and 4.8 million votes were cast against re-electing Steve Jobs to the board at all.

chart courtesy of Apple 2.0/Fortune

Ron Sugar wins board member popularity contest originally appeared on TUAW on Sun, 27 Feb 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Kelly Clarkson Natalie Portman Jessica Biel Christina Milian Kelly Brook