• D: All Things Digital, Monday, July 28, 2008 12 PM

It's not going to be nearly as interesting if Carl Icahn hadn't settled with Yahoo last week, but Yahoo's annual shareholder meeting this Friday may yet serve up some surprises. Who will take the two open board seats? Kara Swisher reminds us that Icahn had previously nominated a slate of nine replacements, including Lucian Bebchuk, Frank Biondi, Jr., John Chapple, Mark Cuban, Adam Dell, Keith Meister, Edward H. Meyer, Brian S. Posner, and former AOL chief Jon Miller. Per last week's agreement, Icahn will now occupy one board seat, and both he and the board will choose two others from his slate on Friday. Activision Blizzard CEO Robert Kotick is also giving up his seat as part of the deal.

Given Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang's endorsement of Jon Miller, Swisher thinks the former AOL CEO is a shoe-in. In fact, during the Yahoo-Icahn standoff, the billionaire investor made it clear that Miller was his first choice replacement for Yang. Getting him on board is step one to completing that plan. However, Swisher thinks Yang will vote for Cuban instead. The Dallas Mavericks owner made his billions by (ironically) selling Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5-plus billion in April 1999. Like so many of its major acquisitions, Broadcast.com never amounted to much.

Swisher says less likely choices for the second spot are Biondi and Meister, followed by former Grey Global CEO Meyer, and Adam Dell, brother of Dell CEO Michael. Bebchuk, with his diverse background in academia and technology, may be more interesting, but she thinks the real dark horse is John Chapple of Nextel, since mobile will be increasingly important to Yahoo in the Web's next phase.

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