[Posted on May 20, 2008 - 1:54 PM]
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"I'd be lying
to say I didn't look up to guys like Carl Icahn, T. Boone Pickens,
Irwin Jacobs, people like that, as corporate heroes," activist investor Daniel Loeb (pictured) told us in 2003. "These guys were coining serious money by buying
positions in undervalued companies and taking on entrenched management
head-on."Five years on, Loeb of hedge fund Third Point LLC, Icahn and Pickens are hoping to coin some serious money by ganging up to take on another undervalued company: Yahoo! Inc. [YHOO] CNBC is reporting that Loeb, who had 1 million shares of the Internet company's stock, has upped his stake to 5 million shares and plans to back Icahn's proxy fight against Yahoo!.
Meanwhile, T. Boone Pickens said on CNBC today that he has bought 10 million shares of the company's stock. "Carl Icahn is a smart guy," Pickens told the cable network. "He does great things for shareholders and now I'm a shareholder. When I saw what he did, I jumped in behind him."
Despite people writing its epitaph virtually the moment Microsoft Corp. [MSFT] in January made its blockbuster $44.6 billion offer to buy the company, Yahoo! has managed to escape the software maker's clutches. Now it's really in a jam, as major investors pile on in order to force a transaction. Yahoo!'s only real leverage in this affair, discounting its nebulous, highly optimistic business plan, remains Microsoft's eagerness to complete a deal. -- Alain Sherter
See October 2003 story on Daniel Loeb from The Deal magazine
See May 20 story on Loeb buying Yahoo! shares from CNBC.com
See May 20 story on Pickens buying Yahoo! shares from Bloomberg
For more see paidContent.org, The New York Times and Silicon Alley Insider
