Businessweek.com - The Associated Press  July 21, 2008, 7:58AM ET

SUNNYVALE, Calif.

Yahoo Inc. said Monday it reached a settlement with activist investor Carl Icahn that will put him and two of his nominees on an expanded board of directors.

The agreement will avert a battle over control of the company that was expected at an Aug. 1 shareholders vote.

Under the agreement, eight members of the current board will seek re-election. Icahn will be appointed to the board, and two other seats will be filled based on a list of nine candidates recommended by Icahn.

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Sillicon Alley Insider - Henry Blodget | July 18, 2008 1:52 PM

Jerry was thrilled to tell 10,000+ global Yahoos that the company’s propaganda campaign is working: Carl Icahn and Microsoft have been painted as a desperate, ludicrous odd couple, and the proxy challenge has all but been defeated.

Or has it?

In his video address this morning, Jerry also noted that the propaganda blitz is going to continue, but now it’s going to happen on the world’s second largest global advertising platform:

I’m excited to tell you that we’re launching an advertising campaign online on our homepage as a way to continue to make our case to stockholders. With one of the largest audiences on the Internet, we’re taking full advantage of the power of our network to remind our stockholders why voting for Carl Icahn’s board of directors is a bad choice.

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Sillicon Alley Insider - Peter Kafka | July 18, 2008 10:07 AM

Carl Icahn’s chances to win the Yahoo proxy war, which had been getting increasingly slim, just dropped to next-to-nothing: Legg Mason’s Bill Miller, who controls 4.4% of of Yahoo shares, just formally sided with Jerry and his existing board.

Technically, Carl still has bullets left: Gordy Crawford, who controls 6.5% of the company, has let it be known that he’s displeased with Jerry, but hasn’t formally come out on Icahn’s side, which leads us to believe that he’s not going to. And in any case, Carl needs 50% of Yahoo shareholders on his side by August 1, and he’s not going to get it with major insitutions pre-emptively voting for Jerry.

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Silicon Alley Insider - Henry Blodget | July 16, 2008 10:40 AM

We have great respect for Jerry Yang, but we think he should step aside and hire a stronger CEO. Jerry is not an operator, and Yahoo needs an operator. More importantly, Jerry has lost the support of many at the company. One source reports that many of Yahoo’s senior managers are waiting around until the shareholder meeting to see what happens–and, if nothing changes, are planning to leave the company.

This does not mean we think shareholders should support Carl Icahn’s slate in the proxy fight. We don’t. We think decapitating Yahoo at this juncture would be a disaster: The multi-month CEO search combined with the multi-month getting-up-to-speed process would be the death-knell for the company. And, although we think Yahoo should revisit the latest Microsoft search offer, we think an Icahn-run Yahoo would have no negotiating leverage.

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Silicon Alley Insider - Henry Blodget | July 14, 2008 6:43 PM

A source close to Yahoo, a source close to Microsoft, and Carl Icahn disagree about a critical part of the search proposal that Yahoo rejected over the weekend: whether or not it required that Carl Icahn be given control of Yahoo.

This is important because this condition was an obvious deal-killer. Absent such a condition, Microsoft’s new search proposal is actually reasonable (or at least worth serious consideration).

The source close to Yahoo says: Read the rest of this entry »

Silicon Alley Insider - Henry Blodget | July 9, 2008 9:22 PM

Andrew Ross Sorkin reports from Sun Valley that Yahoo shareholders will now accept, gasp, less than $33 for the company. Some are even willing to sell for $31.50! Carl Icahn, meanwhile, will reportedly take anything over $30 for his Yahoo stock (which he paid about $25 for).

Well, keep dreaming, everyone.

Microsoft is the richest and most desperate Yahoo buyer imaginable, so it will always likely be the high bidder. It’s true that Microsoft once offered $31 for the company (maybe even $33), but things were different back then.

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