Posted on October 26, 2009 at 10:04 AM
Filed under: Careers | Corporate Strategy | Divesting and Restructuring | Growth Strategy | Joint Ventures and Alliances | Movers & Shakers | People
Tagged: Carl Icahn , Carol Bartz , earnings , GeoCities , Google , Jerry Yang , Microsoft , Roy Bostock , Yahoo!

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Icahn has bid adieu to Yahoo!. Months after publicly battling management to sell the company to Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT), billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn quietly announced his resignation from Yahoo! Inc.'s (NASDAQ:YHOO) board on Friday. The Deal Pipeline (subscription required) has more details on the Microsoft-Yahoo! search deal and earnings.

Yahoo! had some honeyed words for the departing activist, with chairman Roy Bostock writing that "Carl has been an important member of our board and has helped us through some significant transitions. We are all grateful for his active role in shaping the future of Yahoo." But AllThingsDigital says the thoughts of Yahoo! execs, such as CEO Carol Bartz (pictured), were much more sour. Bartz has even taken public jabs at Icahn, calling him just another shareholder that did not have the power to fire her.

Icahn's letter said Yahoo! had no need for an activist investor since the "state of turmoil" when he joined the board has been calmed with bringing in Bartz as CEO and signing a yet-to-be-approved Web search deal with Microsoft which has looming IT integration factors.

Along with helping to oust then-CEO Jerry Yang last year and grabbing board seats for himself, John Chapple and Frank Biondi, Icahn tried to push the sale of Yahoo! to Microsoft. Yang and Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer couldn't find common ground on price (Microsoft put $31 per share in writing) and the public back and forth about the deal and the future of Yahoo! cast a shadow on the Sunnyvale, Calif., Internet giant.

Yahoo! even proposed a advertising deal with search behemoth Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) but that fell through due to antitrust concerns. Google now has its own plan to beef up ad dollars using DoubleClick, which it acquired for $3.1 billion.

But like Bartz has said, Yahoo! is more than a search company, reaching a vast Web audience via social, mobile and video offerings. And Bartz has done much to restructure the company. Since she took over, it has cut jobs and shuttered Web sites such as GeoCities, which it acquired for $2.9 billion in 1999. And Yahoo! recently beefed up its executive ranks, appointing former General Electric Co. (NYSE:GE) executive Andrew Siegel as vice president of corporate development.

After reporting Street-beating earnings last week, Yahoo! raised its outlook for the rest of the year.
- Baz Hiralal




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