Does Yang Bleed Purple? Carl Icahn Aims to Find Out
by John Paczkowski
Posted on June 3, 2008 at 12:15 PM PT
I bleed purple, I bleed Yahoo.”
–Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang
Talk about prescient comments. Last Wednesday, Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Jerry Yang told the D6 audience, “I’ll probably never be a CEO again,” and here we are not a week later and Carl Icahn is telling him that he’s probably right.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Icahn said he will seek Yang’s removal as CEO, should he succeed in his proxy battle against the company over its failure to reach a deal with Microsoft (MSFT). “It’s no longer a mystery to me why Microsoft’s offer isn’t around,” Icahn told the Journal. “How can Yahoo keep saying they’re willing to negotiate and sell the company on the one hand, while at the same time they’re completely sabotaging the process without telling anyone? … I’m very cynical about many of the boards and CEOs in this country, but even I am amazed at the lengths that Jerry Yang and the board went to entrench themselves in this situation.”
Yahoo’s board, incidentally, is rumored to be meeting this afternoon …
