Yahoo! Inc.
upset shareholders because of the way it handled
Microsoft Corp.'s now retracted $47.5 billion offer. Now Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang is stuck looking for other strategic options to appease the dissidents. An alliance with Google Inc. may not get antitrust approval as that would give Yahoogle!, which recently completed a
"successful" two week trial, over 80% of the domestic search ad market. And with Microsoft's Bill Gates saying that CEO Steve Ballmer and company are
pursuing an independent path, the pickings (AOL LLC, MySpace.com, etc.) look slim. But is MSFT really out of the picture? Activist investor Carl Icahn doesn't seem to think so.
Tuesday, it was announced that Icahn had bought about
50 million Yahoo! shares for $1 billion as a precursor to a proxy contest. The hope is that Yahoo! and Microsoft will eventually return to the table and talk deal. On Thursday,
Icahn unveiled his list of ten nominees for the Yahoo! board, including former Viacom Inc. chief executive Frank Biondi. Biondi was part of an
Icahn proxy battle with Motorola Inc. Earlier this year, Icahn got BEA Systems Inc. to agree to an $8.5 billion sale to Oracle Corp.
Investors seem to think Yahoo! is now on track for a deal with someone. The stock was up almost 2% in premarket trading to $27.50, on a YTD range of $18.58 to $34.08. Before the MSFT bid on Feb. 1, Yahoo! shares traded as low as $19.05. -
Baz HiralalGo to the story from the WSJIcahn launches Yahoo! proxy fight
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Juergen Lasowski
And the winners are...
