Board up for re-election at Apple shareholders meeting

In a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Apple announced it will hold the annual meeting on Thursday, April 27, 2006 a.m. pacific time at the Town Hall Auditorium located at Building 4 on its Cupertino, Calif. campus — the same venue used for its most recent media event.

As part of its agenda, Apple will use the meeting to ratify the appointment of KPMG LLP as its independent auditors for the present fiscal year. It will also hold a vote to re-elect each of its seven current board members, which include Fred Anderson, William Campbell, Millard Drexler, Albert Gore, Steve Jobs, Arthur Levinson an Jerome York.

Of the seven board members, Campbell, Jobs and York have resided on the board the longest, each holding their seat since 1997.

Although the annual meeting is often perceived as rather mundane when compared to Apple's other public gatherings, it has turned into a bit of a three-ring circus in recent years.

At last year's meeting, a group of disgruntled environmentalist clamored over what they perceived to be an inadequate recycling policy offered by Apple, chastising Jobs and company for charging a fee to properly dispose of unwanted computers and iPods.

A year earlier at the 2004 shareholders meeting, resellers who charged the company with running them out of business with its own retail stores, staged a protest on the Apple campus, flailing picket signs and drawing car horns from those passing by.

As of Feb. 28, there were 851,679,185 shares of common Apple stock issued or outstanding. Each share is entitled to one vote on all matters brought before the meeting.