by Lawrence C. Strauss, Contributing Writer, Barron's
What a difference two decades makes. In the 1980s, Carl Icahn loomed large as a corporate raider, in the mold of the Gordon Gekko character in the movie “Wall Street.” Icahn made a lot of money but was vilified for what some considered a slash-and-burn approach to taking over companies. Twenty years later, Icahn has morphed into a shareholder activist and rails against what he considers to be incompetence among senior executives and on boards.
by Eric Jackson, Managing Member, Ironfire Capital LLC
To anyone who says that it’s inconsequential that Yahoo understated the level of shareholder dissatisfaction by more than half thanks to a “tabulation error” by its proxy counter, Broadridge, I say: You couldn’t be more wrong. This incident will have ramifications in the coming weeks for the composition of Yahoo’s board.
Carl C. Icahn took his first steps into the Internet earlier this year by beginning a blog. Now he’s about to get some help. The activist shareholder has hired Dane Hamilton, a hedge fund reporter at Thomson Reuters, to work on his Web site, The Icahn Report, according to people briefed on the matter. Mr. [...]
Proxy fights are very expensive and time-consuming. Unlike political elections, where change is often seen, it is unfortunately extremely difficult to take control of a company. By the end of last week, I realized that although many large shareholders supported me and my slate for Yahoo’s board, they were nervous about having a complete change [...]
Mithras Capital, an investment firm which holds 1.7 million Yahoo (YHOO) shares, said in a letter to Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock, CEO Jerry Yang and President Susan Decker on Friday that Mithras plans to vote for Carl Icahn’s slate of directors at the company’s upcoming August 1 annual meeting.
The great CEOs are always focused on products and product marketing. Three that come to mind: Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Eric Schmidt. The products are: Mac & iPod, Windows and Google Search. What’s Yahoo’s great product? What’s its marketing focus? … If I were one of the shareholders voting on the proxy, here’s a question I would ask: If Yahoo is going to remain independent, what kind of company is it going to be?
by Andrew Ross Sorkin, Staff Writer, New York Times
About a month and a half ago, Carl Icahn and I went to dinner at Tse Yang, an upscale Chinese restaurant in Midtown Manhattan. Mr. Icahn, the corporate raider turned activist investor, came blustering through the dimly lit restaurant about 20 minutes late, grabbed one of the waiters–they all know him–and ordered a martini.
It is a sad commentary on the state of affairs in Silicon Valley when Carl Icahn, a known corporate raider from the go-go ’80s, is used as a lightning rod to bring two of technology’s major players, Yahoo and Microsoft, to the table to strike some sort of a deal. And there seems to be some sort of a transaction in the works. And that’s not necessarily a good idea.
by Charles Cooper, Executive Editor of Commentary, CNET News.com
Jerry Yang was able to rope-a-dope Steve Ballmer. But he’s never had to square off against a royal pain in the ass like Carl Icahn. Wednesday afternoon, Icahn, a billionaire with a God complex — or is that repetitive? — wrote a new chapter in this deliciously goofy Microhoo saga when he launched plans for a proxy contest to challenge Yahoo’s famously feckless board of directors with his own handpicked nominees.
So here’s the basic conundrum in this whole concept of Carl Icahn launching a proxy contest for Yahoo (YHOO): What’s the point unless he can get Microsoft (MSFT) to launch a new bid?
It is certainly possible that institutional investors are sufficiently irritated at Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and the company’s board that they might want to oust some or all of the directors. But to what end?
Carl Icahn just stepped into the Yahoo fray–he’s reportedly accumulated 3.5% of the Internet company’s stock. If he can nominate a few directors in the two remaining days before Yahoo’s deadline for filing nominees to its board, the road ahead may not be all that difficult.
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