June 30th, 2008
Yahoo posts Icahn scoreboard; Touts Google pact to shareholders
Yahoo on Monday filed its shareholder pitch with the Securities and Exchange Commission as its proxy fight with activist investor Carl Icahn gathers steam. Much of the presentation was designed to “correct the record” on everything from the company’s compensation plan to how the Microsoft bid went down. But Yahoo does make a new case that Icahn isn’t exactly the panacea for shareholder value.
Yahoo’s presentation (statement, SEC filing, Techmeme) is coming off a week where it reorganized its operations under president Sue Decker. The reorg is designed to make Yahoo more responsive and the company is likely to hold up its latest efforts as a sign it is headed in the right direction. The company’s presentation on Monday covered a lot of known ground, but did serve up a few highlights. Among the standouts for me:
Is Icahn the kiss of shareholder death? Yahoo compiled the following chart to highlight where shares headed after Icahn got involved. Click on the image for the few view, but you can follow the red arrows. The chart should rile up Icahn I’d think since it could be viewed as a bit personal. Nice to see Yahoo is fighting back a little more–on Friday Icahn reiterated (again) that he’d boot Yang for a better CEO. Icahn isn’t saying much outside of his SEC filings.
And then Yahoo reverts to its usual company line: We need Jerry; Google deal rocks and Icahn has no plan.
Yahoo also reiterated that Microsoft was never that interested in the company (good luck selling that one):
Yahoo also reiterates why its deal with Google is better than Microsoft’s counter.
And shows how this Google partnership will work in practice (illustrative purposes only). Click for the full screen shot.
And the punchline…
Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
