SiliconBeat

Speaking at Stanford University on Sunday night, Yahoo Chief Executive Carol Bartz said it has been a “distinct pleasure” to have Carl Icahn, a famous corporate raider turned shareholder activist, on her board.
Last year, Icahn led a proxy fight to oust former Yahoo chief executive Jerry Yang and replace other members of the board of directors after Yahoo rejected a $47.5 billion bid from Microsoft. Icahn later dropped his challenge in return for being given control of three seats on the 11-member board.
Speaking at the 15th annual Stanford Directors College Bartz, who replaced Yang in January, said she was “fortunate” not to have been at Yahoo during the proxy battle but added that it is “better” to have Icahn around and described him as a “smart guy.”
Bartz, who won respect for turning around a hostile board of directors while she was chief executive of Autodesk, said corporate boards need to have more members who are involved and willing to speak up. She also said boards need a diversity of ages and should be selected from different industries and positions — not just chief executive officers.

Yahoo said today it has amended a controversial employee severance agreement it adopted last February less than two weeks after Microsoft made its unsolicited offer to buy the Internet giant, according to a regulatory filing. The severance program guaranteed a mix of cash and stock payments to all 13,800 Yahoo employees if they were fired or quit after being reassigned to a new job within two years after a Microsoft takeover.

The number of months of severance that were to be paid under the plan were called Read the rest of this entry »

Carl Icahn placed a bet on Advanced Micro Devices in the third quarter, acquiring 1.6 million shares of the Sunnyvale chip maker, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Friday in which his investment company, Icahn Capital, periodically details its holdings.

The stake was valued at Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s another dispatch from Mercury News reporter Elise Ackerman, who has been covering the Yahoo saga for us. She’s been examining some materials related to the shareholder litigation brought about regarding Microsoft’s proposed takeover:

Now that the Yahoo shareholder meeting is over and Carl Icahn has been appointed to Yahoo’s board of directors he will be working to rescind severance plans adopted by the board’s compensation committee on February 12 , 2008.

According to a declaration filed in Delaware Court by John Fox, a veteran Silicon Valley employment attorney, the plans were highly unusual. Read the rest of this entry »

Jim Hedger and Dave Davies asked me to come on Webcology, their Internet Radio show, on Thursday to talk about the Yahoo settlement with shareholder Carl Icahn and where things go from here. My part starts about 10 minutes in and lasts about 30 minutes (and there was a brief technical glitch where I got cut off). But otherwise, it was a good discussion. You can stream or download the episode here. And I’ve uploaded it to this post as well.

Let me know what you think. And be sure to check out their show.

Today’s filings in the Yahoo saga include a hit piece on Carl Icahn’s prowess as an investor. It kicks off with the prominently featured graphic we show here, and then details information related to his involvement with 15 companies over the last couple of years, including what has happened to the stock price of each since Icahn began his involvement. In case you’re wondering, in the case of all but three, the stocks lost value, which Yahoo kindly helps you tally with the use of big bold arrows.

We can’t vouch for the accuracy of any of this Read the rest of this entry »

My front-page column in the Mercury News on the Yahoo proxy fight with Carl Icahn drew some strong responses from readers. I’ll stand by my prediction that Icahn would win a shareholder vote on Aug. 1, but there are some things I want to clarify about my feelings and perspective on this mess.

First, let’s go the readers’ comments. Read the rest of this entry »

Shareholder activist and current Yahoo nemesis Carl Icahn felt it necessary to file his blog post of this morning with the SEC as an attachment to his proxy filing offering a rival slate of nominees to serve on Yahoo’s board of directors. If his proxy fight with Yahoo fails, he may at least have a nice list of subscribers to his blog.

Regarding Your Comments on Yahoo

Posted by Carl Icahn June 27, 2008: 10:16 AM

Many of you have been asking me about Yahoo. Please remember I am in the middle of a proxy fight. A proxy fight involves a complicated process of SEC approvals, federal securities laws, filing requirements and a great deal of time and money.

At this time, due to SEC regulations, I do not intend to post your comments regarding the proxy fight. However, I am planning to give you my views about Yahoo and its management shortly. If you wish to be informed I invite you to subscribe. Stay tuned.

Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang and Chairman Roy Bostock explained why they found their company’s new agreement with Google “so exciting” in a letter to shareholders Wednesday. But the bottom line of the communication was to urge them to vote AGAINST the dissident slate of directors being nominated by Carl Icahn. We quote herewith: Read the rest of this entry »

Corporate raider, or corporate savior Carl Icahn has started his own blog, The Icahn Report. A sampling of titles since it rolled out last week: “Absurdity of Corporate Board Elections,” “Absurdity of the Staggered Board,” and “Absurdity of the Poison Pill.” Yesterday’s post was titled “Corporate Democracy is a Myth.”

You’d think Carl might have some thoughts on Yahoo, which failed to heed Icahn’s advice on reigniting Microsoft’s desire, or Biogen Idec, whose shareholders just rejected Icahn’s candidates for that company’s board today, but no.

There is much that is quotable on Icahn’s blog, but we pass along this “slightly facetious”metaphor from his post Monday titled “About CEOs–Anti-Darwinian Metaphor–Survival of the
Unfittest” about the way CEOs become CEOs in America: Read the rest of this entry »