Carl Icahn, who joined the Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO) board on August 6.2008 after a long proxy fight with the company, is leaving. The portal company had rejected Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) search and restructuring proposal the month before Icahn’s addition to the portal company’s board. The Microsoft negotiation was the end of a long series of events which began when the world’s largest software company made a bid to buy Yahoo! for $44.6 billion.
Icahn never really got his way as a board member. There was not follow-on offer from Microsoft to buy Yahoo! and the company’s shares traded below $13 for a number of months after the conversations between the two firms broke off.
Carol Bartz became Yahoo!’s CEO in January of this year because the company’s board hoped that outside blood would reinvigorate the firm. Bartz cut several hundred employees, but earnings stayed weak. After much rumored but confidential talks, Yahoo! and Microsoft formed a joint search engine venture on July 29.
The venture will take over a year to integrate according to the companies, but should add tens of millions of dollars to Yahoo!’s bottom line.
Yahoo! announced earnings earlier this week and they were good enough to drive the stock over $17.
In a statement about his departure, Icahn said “there was not a need at this time for an activist investor”. In reality, he simply did not get what he wanted.
Douglas A. McIntyre
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