Motorola Needs Icahn

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Institutional Shareholder Services, proxy advisory service, thinks that flagging cell phone and telecom equipment company Motorola (MOT) needs Carl Icahn on its board. He owns just shy of 3% of the shares.

The WSJ quotes ISS as saying: "Although long-term historical picture is more favorable, the significant near-term deterioration argues for a new perspective on the board." Motorola argues that Icahn has no tech background, but neither do several other board members.

Given what Mr. Icahn has done for shareholders at other companies including Time Warner (TWX) and MedImmune (MEDI), Motorola CEO Ed Zander and the board should put Icahn on. (MOT stock is up 2% on the ISS news.)

They have nothing to lose but their jobs.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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