Monday, June 9, 2008
Correction: Icahn Rubber, Yahoo Glue
By the time this Yahoo debacle has sorted itself out Carl Icahn may have done more to revive the long lost art of letter writing than to revive Yahoo itself. In another stink bomb of a letter to Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock today, the activist investor slagged the company’s leadership with particular vitriol. “… You made approximately $10,000 per week last year — not bad for a board member,” Icahn wrote. “I believe most of your shareholders would be interested in seeing your time sheets — especially in light of the fact that, in my estimation, most of your so-called “plans” over the last few years have been failures.”
If yesterday’s caustic exchange between Yahoo and Carl Icahn, who likened the company’s CEO to a James Bond villain, is any indication, Yahoo’s Aug. 1 shareholder meeting is going to play out like the denouement of “Goldfinger.” Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock lashed out against Icahn late yesterday, claiming the activist investor’s recent allegations about the company’s mismanagement “seriously manipulates the facts.”
Have you heard? Carl Icahn is unhappy with Yahoo’s current leadership and the manner in which it handled Microsoft’s unsolicited acquisition offer. In a stink-bomb of a letter to Roy Bostock, the chairman of Yahoo’s board of directors, Icahn accused Yahoo of acting against its shareholders’ best interests by making it practically impossible for Microsoft to stay at the bargaining table. 
Just because Microsoft “reserves the right” to reconsider its unsolicited offer to acquire Yahoo, doesn’t mean it will do so. Indeed, to hear Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer tell it, nothing could be further from the company’s mind. 
If, as Carl Icahn claimed this morning, Yahoo’s board has acted irrationally and lost the faith of shareholders, the Internet company apparently sees no point in acting rationally to regain it. In a letter to the investor-agitator, Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock dismissed Icahn’s threat of a proxy battle nearly as brusquely as it turned away Microsoft.
