Blog Editor comment...6/8/2008

This is Icahn at the top of his game...corporate blackmail, extortion, nothing less at what he does best! Icahn complains about corporate governance...exactly the SAME things HE DID did while running TWA into the ground, sucking every last time from the company and its employees. Bottom line...a quick buck to add to his war chest. Icahn knows NOTHING about running a company. The proof is in his actions!


Icahn tells Yahoo to sell for $49.5B, or $34.375 a share
Updated
By Jon Swartz, USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO — Billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn's latest salvo in his escalating war against Yahoo's (YHOO) board put a price tag on the embattled company and intensified pressure on Yahoo as it approaches its annual shareholders meeting.

In a scathing letter to Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock on Friday, Icahn said he wants Yahoo to tell Microsoft (MSFT) it's willing to be sold for $49.5 billion, about $2 billion above Microsoft's last offer for the Internet pioneer.

"Why don't you stop dancing around the subject and publicly offer to sell the company to Microsoft for $34.375 per share and promise to cooperate completely?" Icahn said in the strongly worded letter.

Yahoo said declaring an acceptable sales price for the company would be "ill-advised."
Microsoft declined comment. It withdrew an oral offer of $47.5 billion, or $33 a share, last month after Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang asked for $37 a share.

Icahn's letter was just the latest volley in an increasingly nasty campaign to force Yahoo's sale.
In a letter on Wednesday, Icahn made it clear he wants Yahoo's board replaced and Yang fired unless the company works out a deal with Microsoft before Yahoo's shareholders meeting Aug. 1.
Icahn, who carved a reputation as a ruthless corporate raider in the 1980s and reinvented himself as a shareholder activist in recent years, was particularly miffed by what he claimed was a provision by Yahoo that would add more than $2 billion to the cost of a takeover.
In his letter Wednesday, Icahn accused Yahoo's management and board of putting themselves ahead of their shareholders.

Some tech analysts say Icahn is merely softening up Yahoo in the weeks leading up to its shareholders meeting in San Jose. If Yahoo staves off Icahn, it faces a torrent of lawsuits from disgruntled shareholders, says Jonathan Yarmis, an analyst at AMR Research.
"I'll bet after the shareholders meeting — if there's no deal done — you'd have a hard time booking a hotel room in Wilmington, Del., as plaintiffs' lawyers line up to file their lawsuits," Yarmis says.

Ultimately, Icahn's end game is simple, Yarmis and others say.
"It's quick money. Nothing more, nothing less," Yarmis says. "(Icahn) has to make Yahoo think that the path of least risk is doing something large with, or selling to, Microsoft. I still don't think a deal for the whole enchilada is out of the question."

Yahoo shares inched up 8 cents to $26.44 in trading Friday. Microsoft shares slipped 81 cents to $27.49.