Yahoo board of director resigns; Shareholder meeting delayed

Yahoo said Thursday that Edward Kozel resigned from its board of directors. The company will reduce the size of its board from 10 directors to nine and delayed its shareholder meeting from July 3 to "around the end of July 2008."

Investor Carl Icahn has proposed an alternate slate of 10 directors in a proxy fight and will likely have to drop one since Yahoo is cutting the size of its board. In a brief SEC filing, Yahoo said Kozel (right, Techmeme) was resigning to spend more time with his family. Yahoo explains:

On May 20, 2008, Mr. Edward Kozel resigned from the Board of Directors of Yahoo! Inc. Mr. Kozel noted in a letter to the Company that he had intended to leave the Board of Directors in February to spend more time with his family, but decided to stay on the Board of Directors following the Company’s receipt of an unsolicited proposal from Microsoft. Mr. Kozel noted his plan to focus on personal matters, including relocating his family to Europe this summer. Mr. Kozel has served as a member of the Company’s Board of Directors since October 2000, serving as Chair of the Audit Committee from April 2002 to March 2008.

Kozel had been on Yahoo's board since Oct. 2000, according to his biography.

Here's the full bio before Yahoo takes it down:

Edward Kozel has served as a member of the board of directors since October 2000. He has served as the chairman of Skyrider, Inc. since December 2007, and was its Chief Executive Officer from March 2006 until December 2007. Mr. Kozel was also a managing member of Open Range Ventures, a venture capital firm, from January 2000 until December 2006. Between January 2004 and December 2004, Mr. Kozel was a managing director of Integrated Finance, Ltd., a private advisory services firm. Until 2002 he was a member of the Board of Directors of Cisco Systems, Inc., where he worked for 11 years in a variety of roles, including chief technology officer and senior vice president of business development. During his tenure at Cisco, he founded the business development group which, under his direction, was responsible for more than 22 technology acquisitions and 25 minority investments. Mr. Kozel is an industry innovator who previously worked at Boeing, McDonnell Douglas and SRI International, where he participated in the early design and development of the Internetwork Protocol (IP) model and TCP/IP, packet radio networks and highly distributed information systems. In addition to Yahoo!, Mr. Kozel served as a director of Reuters Group PLC from March 2000 to April 2007 and is currently a director of Network Appliance, Inc. He graduated from the University of California, Davis with a degree in electrical engineering.