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Wyly's big day at CA falls flat

Tiffany Kary CNet

Published: 29 Aug 2001 16:36 BST

Sam Wyly's "liberation day" for Computer Associates' shareholders failed to materialise on Wednesday as the company re-elected 10 incumbent board members.

The Texas financier's two-month battle to win control of CA's board came to its climax in Wednesday's vote at the company's shareholder meeting here. Official results will not be known for two to three weeks.

Based on CA's estimates, the company's current board members won 75 percent of the shares voted. All 10 CA nominees -- Russell M. Artzt, Linus W. L. Cheung, Alfonse M. D'Amato, Willem F. P. de Vogel, Richard A. Grasso, Shirley Strum Kenny, Sanjay Kumar, Roel Pieper, Lewis S. Ranieri and Charles B. Wang -- were elected, while Wyly's nominees were defeated.

Wyly outlined his original plan to take over the entire board in late June. His argument was that under Chairman Wang, there is "chronic abuse of customers and employees," and widespread accounting tricks used to hide slumping sales.

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