Four Yahoo Board Members to Depart, Two New Ones Arrive and Three More on the Way (Like I Said)

According to sources close to the situation, Yahoo will announce the impending departure of four of its longtime board members, including chairman Roy Bostock.

The others headed out the door are Hewlett-Packard exec Vyomesh Joshi, Gary Wilson and Arthur Kern.

I had reported in several previous posts that this exact group of directors was leaving, and noted in one yesterday that it was about to happen, and that new board members were also on the way.

And, presto, it is so!

(Update: Yahoo confirmed all in a letter it just released from Bostock, which I have posted separately.)

Yahoo’s two new directors are former Rovi CEO Fred Amoroso and LiveOps Chairman (and former CEO) Maynard Webb, who was once COO of eBay (pictured, left to right).

Rovi does digital entertainment technology, while LiveOps offers cloud-based enterprise solutions.

The Silicon Valley Internet giant will also be adding three more board members, said sources, but those people are not confirmed as yet.

And it is not clear who will be chairman of Yahoo’s board, either. Intuit CEO Brad Smith has a full-time job, and the newly installed Weather Channel CEO David Kenny does, too.

Sources said the news is coming after the markets close, with other updates, including: The news-free status of its ongoing strategery (the Asian deal is coming along — blah, blah, blah — but you read that here yesterday in much more detail); ladling praise on new CEO Scott Thompson (also formerly of eBay); and giving props to co-founder Jerry Yang, who stepped away from the board and from the company several weeks ago.

The moves by Yahoo are designed to thwart a possible proxy fight that might be coming from activist shareholder Daniel Loeb, who has been working on a board slate of his own.

It’s been hard for him, and also for Yahoo, to attract significant names to the board. The two new additions are solid tech execs, although certainly not high-profile appointments.

Yahoo declined to comment.

Here are their bios from the Rovi and LiveOps Web sites, if you want to know more:

Fred Amoroso is a member of Rovi Corporation’s Board of Directors. Fred Amoroso is a member of Rovi Corporation’s Board of Directors. Fred Amoroso previously served as Rovi’s president and chief executive officer from July 2005 to December 2011. Prior to joining Rovi, Mr. Amoroso served as an advisor to Warburg Pincus, an investment firm from September 2004 to June 2005. From July 2002 to August 2004, Mr. Amoroso served as the president, chief executive officer and vice chairman of Meta Group, an information technology research and advisory firm. From October 1999 until its merger with IBM in January 2002, Mr. Amoroso served as president, chief executive officer and a director of CrossWorlds Software, Inc. Prior to CrossWorlds, Amoroso was a member of the world-wide management committee of IBM, was general manager of IBM Global Services Asia Pacific and held various other executive positions at IBM. Before joining IBM, Amoroso held various positions at Price Waterhouse, now PricewaterhouseCoopers, including lead technology partner. Mr. Amoroso holds a B.S. in systems engineering and M.S. in operations research from Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn.