July 31st, 2008
Icahn: I’m not showing up to Yahoo’s shareholder meeting
Talk about anticlimactic: Billionaire investor and proxy war ninja Carl Icahn isn’t going to bother showing up to Yahoo’s shareholder meeting on Friday.
In a post, Icahn–newly muzzled courtesy of a deal he cut with Yahoo–writes:
I will not be attending. The proxy fight is over and it will not do shareholders or Yahoo! any good to have the annual meeting turn into a media event for no purpose. Last week, I realized it was impossible to gain enough support from the large institutions to win a majority of the Yahoo! directorships. In today’s corporate governance system where large mutual funds control so much of the stock, it is extremely difficult to oust an entire board, no matter how strongly a large number of shareholders feel about the board’s previous actions. Realizing I could not gain control, I saw no point in spending the final two weeks in a debilitating fight, where little would be accomplished except to build animosity between both camps and the end result would be no better than the compromise that was reached.
Icahn added that he has met with chairman Roy Bostock and CEO Jerry Yang and said “I believe both gentlemen genuinely wish that we will be able to work together to enhance value. While we still disagree on many points, I have great hope “this will be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
A beautiful friendship? That’s overdoing it a bit isn’t it Carl?
I’m sure there will be a few shareholders that will be griping, but without Icahn being the ring leader the shareholder meeting is a bit of a buzzkill. Hell, even T. Boone Pickens has sold his shares. Booorrrrinnng.
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.
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