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NEW YORK -- Yahoo! YHOO appointed three directors to its board, setting up for a proxy fight with Third Point LLC, one of its largest shareholders. Hedge fund Third Point, which owns a 5.8% stake in Yahoo!, last week launched a bid to gain four seats on the Internet company's board. Yahoo!'s nominees to the board are John Hayes, chief marketing officer of American Express AXP , Peter Liguori, former chief operating officer of Discovery Communications DISCA , and Thomas McInerney, the outgoing chief financial officer of IAC/InterActiveCorp IACI . AOL AOL hired Evercore Partners to find a buyer for its more than 800 patents and explore other strategic options, Bloomberg reported, citing three people with knowledge of the situation. Private-equity firms, including Providence Equity Partners, TPG Capital and Silver Lake, have approached AOL about taking the company private, yet the overtures haven't resulted in a deal, said the people. Evercore is trying to help AOL wring value from a patent portfolio, which some estimate can yield more than $1 billion in licensing income. Roche, the Swiss drug giant, extended its $5.7 billion cash bid for Illumina ILMN , the U.S. gene-sequencing company, for a second time. Roche is offering $44.50 a share for Illumina. The acceptance period was extended to April 20. Illumina continues to reject the bid. "Illumina's board of directors continues to believe that Roche's offer is grossly inadequate, and that Illumina is positioned to create far more value than Roche has offered. Our stockholders clearly agree," the company said Monday in a statement. The biggest earnings names on Monday include Cal-Maine Foods CALM and Apollo Group APOL . -- Written by Joseph Woelfel >To contact the writer of this article, click here: Joseph Woelfel Related links: Apple's iPhone 5: What to Expect The 5 Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week: March 23

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Stocks to Watch: Yahoo!, AOL, Illumina