It was expected that the owners of at least one tenth of the shares would say no to discharge from liability for Ericsson's Board of Directors and CEO at the Annual General Meeting.
But the results from the vote count show a greater dissatisfaction than that.
The background is suspicions that Ericsson paid money to the terrorist sect IS, and later obscured it for the shareholders.
At the same time, the US Department of Justice is on the warpath against the company for having broken an agreement on another suspected bribery.
"Worse than in advance speculation"
The anger against this mainly affected the members of the board committee that is set to scrutinize just this: the audit and rules compliance committee.
The members of the committee, together with the CEO Börje Ekholm, received approximately 25 percent of the votes cast against them in the discharge vote.
The employee representative on the committee received a similar slap in the face.
Other board members did better but were high above the limit to get discharge.
They received about 15 percent of the votes and about 18 percent of the share capital against them.
The rating for the tops at Ericsson from the shareholders was thus even worse than in the previous speculations.
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"This is a very unusual event" - see financial commentator Kristina Lagerström that Ericsson's board will not be released from liability.
Photo: SVT / Jessica Gow / TT