Major shareholder could pull support from Yahoo board

Capital Research and Management, of which Crawford is a director, owns a 6.5% stake in Yahoo. The investment outfit is reportedly furious with Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock and chief executive Jerry Yang for failing to agree a sale to Microsoft.

Should Crawford propose to oust Yahoo's board at the AGM, it will be a largely symbolic move - shareholders will not be offered the chance to vote out board members - but it will send a key signal to the market that Yahoo shareholders are not happy with the company's direction.

Last week, Yahoo moved to head off a potentially bigger shareholder showdown at the AGM, by handing activist investor Carl Icahn three seats on its board.

Icahn, who has spent billions of dollars in recent months building up a 5% stake in the company, had been pushing for the complete removal of Yahoo's board. In its place, he wanted to install executives who are open to selling Yahoo to Microsoft, which has failed in several attempts to acquire Yahoo, most recently last week, when it teamed with Icahn to table a bid for Yahoo's search business.

Last week's agreement will put Icahn and two of his nominees on an expanded board of Yahoo directors.