Carl Icahn-ic: Shareholder Activist Talks About His Quest to Improve Boardrooms (Are You Listening, Yahoo?)
by Kara Swisher
Posted on November 16, 2008 at 2:39 AM PT
What does Carl Icahn, the billionaire activist shareholder who waged war on Yahoo and now sits on its board, really think?
“…I really think current boards and managements are killing the country,” he said in an interview published Friday in The Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Journal. “I’ll tell you why, ’cause I’ve lived it. I’m on a lot of boards, I see how ineffectual they are.”
While he was talking about the state of American management in general and not Yahoo in particular, it’s worth reading an interesting chat Icahn had for a feature called “The Weekend Interview.”
The reason for the talk was because Icahn recently launched United Shareholders of America, which is aimed at changing laws to make management more accountable to shareholders.
Said Icahn about the impact of legislation on CEOs: “…that if they’re going to mess up and they’re playing golf all day, some shareholders will be able to call a meeting to say no more poison pills, no more staggered boards, we want you to get out of here.”
But some of the lax standards are apparently amusing to him. According to the Journal: “Icahn says some boards are so bad that it’s (almost) funny. There’s no need to watch Saturday Night Live anymore, he says, ‘I just sit at a board meeting.’”
Life probably is not quite so funny with regard to Yahoo (YHOO), given Icahn’s five percent stake in the company, which he bought in the mid-$20 range, is now trading at about $10 to $11 a share.
Sources at Yahoo said they are worried Icahn could dump some of his holdings or sell the whole chunk at a loss to one buyer, because several other of his investments are also suffering of late. Such a move could further tank Yahoo shares.
That seems unlikely given Icahn is on the Yahoo board, serving along with two other directors he picked, as part of his settlement with Yahoo to withdraw his proxy fight this past summer.
But he has been unusually quiet since he joined, as has the rest of the board, which could mean he has either become frustrated into inaction or is quietly working on something to turn things around at Yahoo.
That could range from the deal to merge with Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL, to pushing to have Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang replaced, to continuing his longstanding agitation to get a search deal done with Microsoft (MSFT).
In the Journal interview, Icahn did address Yahoo and such a search deal, although he said little that was new.
Here is that portion of the piece in its entirety:
This summer, he worked with Microsoft to purchase Yahoo’s ‘search,’ but settled for a place on the board. ‘I thought they would do a deal with Microsoft. Obviously, I think Yahoo made a mistake by not doing so. I talked to [Microsoft CEO] Steve Ballmer quite a bit, and we had a pretty damn good deal to sell search,’ he says. ‘I thought I could be an activist in it, but it was very difficult. But these things take time.’ Mr. Icahn says he can’t comment too much about the issue, but he still thinks that Yahoo ‘should do a deal with Microsoft.’”
In fact, everyone thinks that, including Yang, who also said as much in a recent interview at the Web 2.0 Summit.
Everyone, that is, except for Microsoft.
[Drawing, from the Journal, by Ismael Roldan.]
Comments
Let’s face facts, YHOO’s board is about as effective as Yang, and that is by no means a compliment. I’m totally disappointed by Carls lack of action, at least up to this point. Most of us certainly hope that he is orchestrating something. My hope would be a twofold plan: 1) Dump Yang; 2) MSFT is open to a deal, hopefully full outright acquisition, but I guess a serch deal is better then anything at this point. I find it highly unlikely that Carl would be willing to absorb such a big loss, especially after his public war that he raged. He’s ego, as well as his pocket book, couldn’t allow it. Although Pickens decided that the brain trust as YHOO was too stupid to deal with and dumped the stock at a nice loss. I think Carl has much more skin in the game then T. Boone Pickens, but stranger things happen, especially with an incompetent such as Yang at the helm. Either way, nothing good at YHOO happens while Yang is still at the helm. He has no leadership abilities, he can’t close a deal to save his life, no one ( other then Sue & Roy ) has any confidence in him. I actually think truth be told neither Sue nor Roy has any confidence in him either, but since their pay check is ties to Yang’s coattails, I doubt we’ll be seeing any criticism of Yang coming from them 2.
Posted by Mike Kane at November 16th, 2008 at 6:39 pmyahoo’s board is in yang’s pocket and always was…it’s not a true ‘independent’ board like boards are supposed to be
that’s how yahoo could create the severance pay bomb that blocked microsoft and also icahn’s moves
icahn got the shaft here, but he deserved it… he’s as ruthless as any of wall street
Posted by Sam Harrison at November 16th, 2008 at 7:02 pmDoesn’t Carl Icahn still hold a significant stake in TWX stock too?
Posted by James Lee at November 21st, 2008 at 10:55 pmIt was delightful to see Bill and Steve sharing a stage and reminiscing about their stuff, but I was surprised that Bill (gadgets) and Steve (widgets) didn’t settle the debate about the original inventor of the widget.
One can never have too many widgets. Somebody codes something you never even dreamed of wanting – suddenly everybody
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Posted by erdem ela at April 17th, 2009 at 10:57 pmbedava ligtv izle
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şiir türleriçetchatsohbet needs a whole bunch of widgets because they don’t impinge too much on the screen/template real estate.