Viasat annual meeting: all three proposals pass, Dankberg draws steepest withhold among Class III nominees
At Viasat's (VSAT) September 3 annual stockholder meeting, shareholders passed all three proposals on the ballot, electing Mark Dankberg, William LaPlante, and Michael Paull as Class III directors and ratifying…
Key takeaways
- At Viasat's September 3 annual meeting, shareholders passed all three ballot proposals, electing Mark Dankberg, William LaPlante, and Michael Paull as Class III directors and ratifying PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as auditor through the fiscal year ending March 31, 2027.
- Mark Dankberg drew the steepest opposition among the nominees with 5,668,136 withheld votes, more than five times LaPlante's 1,121,459 withheld.
- All three director nominees faced the same 12,400,742 broker non-votes, so the withhold divergence came from participating shareholders.
- The advisory say-on-pay vote passed with 111,567,560 for and 2,768,292 against, reflecting lighter shareholder resistance than the Dankberg withhold count.
- Viasat filed the 8-K reporting these results with the SEC on September 4, signed by Associate General Counsel Brett Church.
At Viasat's (VSAT) September 3 annual stockholder meeting, shareholders passed all three proposals on the ballot, electing Mark Dankberg, William LaPlante, and Michael Paull as Class III directors and ratifying PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as independent auditor through the fiscal year ending March 31, 2027. The director results did not land evenly: Dankberg collected 5,668,136 withheld votes, more than five times the 1,121,459 withheld against LaPlante.
Each of the three nominees faced the same 12,400,742 broker non-votes, which puts the withhold divergence squarely on participating shareholders. Dankberg's 109,226,749 in-favor votes secured his seat. LaPlante led the field with 113,773,426 for and the lightest opposition of the three. Paull received 111,296,455 for and 3,598,430 withheld, landing between the two. On proposal two, PricewaterhouseCoopers cleared 123,004,943 in favor against 3,880,470 opposed, with 410,214 abstentions. The advisory say-on-pay vote drew 111,567,560 for and 2,768,292 against, with 559,033 abstentions.
Treating all three director elections as a uniform sweep misses the granularity. Dankberg's withheld total outpaced Paull's by more than 2 million votes and LaPlante's by more than 4.5 million. The gap marks where shareholder opposition concentrated, even as all three elections concluded without a contested outcome. The same shareholder base that elevated Dankberg's withhold count offered notably lighter resistance on say-on-pay, an asymmetry that will read differently depending on how you weight governance signals against compensation approval rates.
Viasat, Inc. is incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in Carlsbad, California. The 8-K, signed by Associate General Counsel Brett Church, was filed with the SEC on September 4. What to watch: PwC's reappointment runs through March 31, 2027, the next hard date the filing establishes.