Billionaire investor Carl Icahn would seek to remove Jerry Yang as chief executive of Yahoo Inc if Icahn succeeded in a proxy battle against the company over its failure to reach a deal with Microsoft…
“It’s no longer a mystery to me why Microsoft’s offer isn’t around,” the Wall Street Journal quoted Icahn as saying. “How can Yahoo keep saying they’re willing to negotiate and sell the company on the one hand, while at the same time they’re completely sabotaging the process without telling anyone?”
Yahoo fired back in a statement: “Yahoo’s board of directors, including Jerry Yang, has been crystal clear that it would consider any proposal by Microsoft that was in the best interests of its shareholders.”
Curiouser and curiouser. And sometimes funnier!
What?!!
Yank Yahoo’s what! John that sounds dirty.
@Derek
That’s because you have a dirty mind. If you knew who ran Yahoo it wouldn’t sound so bad.
Icahn must have something to gain through this deal, but I can’t imagine what. He is a major stockholder and supposedly a smart guy. Any smart guy would see clearly that this deal with microsoft would devalue Yahoo.
UNLESS…
Looking at Yahoo’s $26.15 share price and Microsoft’s $33.00/share offer, well, that’s a 26% instant increase!
Let’s go through the numbers. He owns 50 million shares currently worth well over 13 billion dollars. If the shares are worth $33 each, the total value would be 1.65 billion.
His earns and easy 350 million dollars!!
Now it looks like a smart guy would do ANYTHING to make this deal go through! (Yahoo be damned).
Isn’t Carl Icahn the guy who bankrupted Eastern Airlines in the late 80s or TWA?
Didn’t he end up getting banned from the airline industry or something as a result?
the people like carl icahn are the type of people who got the US in this economic mess in the first place by looking for the quick and damn anything like long term success. most of you on here know that an MS/Yahoo merger, if it was even allowed by the EU or the DoJ, it wouldn’t be beneficial to MS in any long-term way. if anything, it might make MS become more regulated as they would be a bigger monopoly.
but carl icahn is not the answer to yahoo’s or MS’s mess. maybe those companies should actually make a better mousetrap? or would that be too much work for some people?
how about we ban leveraged buyouts, corporate raiding, and all of that short-term greed? that way we could avoid messes like unsubstantiated 130 buck oil, rampant unexplained run-ups in grains and foods, etc. and maybe less bubbles would equal a more stable economy… just my humble opinion…
I’ve been a huge fan of Yahoo for many years but I find myself drifting to either iGoogle or Netvibes as my homepage. They just work better.
So, if someone as faithful as me is drifting away, they’d better do some serious changes.
I wonder if Yany ever used a Wang Computer ???