Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Yahoo! Becomes Shark Bait


According to the WSJ & others this morning, Carl Icahn has bought into Yahoo! following the withdrawal of the best-and-final offer from Microsoft. Having Icahn out there stirring up trouble is most definitely bad news for Jerry Yang, Yahoo!'s CEO, because, as reported, it might signal a proxy battle is looming.

Not clear if Microsoft would come back to the table even if Icahn could replace a slew of board directors but clearly Yang's support base would vaporize along with those changes. If history is anything to go by, it's now just a matter of when Yang goes rather than if. Anyone remember what happened at Motorola last year when Icahn bought a little over 1% of the company? Zander was harangued both in public and behind the scenes, especially once it became clear that the Razr wave was spent and nothing was following in its wake, with the net result that he was unceremoniously booted out by year end.


"Wall" plus "writing" = ?

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