Comments on: Icahn also fighting clock in Yahoo board challenge

Investor activist Carl Icahn gets an encouraging sign from Microsoft but has yet to outline his challenge for Yahoo's board of directors.

[jamalystic]

The never-ending saga! Such desperate acts by Microsoft are reall uncall for. There are many better ways to enhance MSHT online presence than what a deal with yahoo could offer them: Why Microsoft Should Forego the Acquisitions Route(http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=625&doc_id=158193&F_src=flftwo)

[drichards1953]

Icahn has pulled this game with a number of companies. He could not care less about Yahoo, he is looking for a big payday. Usually one of two things occur when he stages one of his attacks on a company, he gets a large premium for his stock and is told to go away, or he does get control of the company and then bleeds it dry leaving it deep in debt. Lately the best he could get is the company selling out. TWA is a good example of his corporate raider games, BEA Systems was pretty much forced to sell to Oracle because of Icahn. More and more companies and their shareholders are rejecting Icahn's games, such as in the case of Motorola. MSFT has a very serious problem with this deal. They are a convicted monopolist still under Court monitoring. This may be what finally pushes the Court to put additional controls on MSFT. This is too obvious an attempt to take out a competitor by MSFT.

[frank1307]

Whats so bad about Icahn upsetting Yang's applecart? Yang and company consistently fail to deliver for shareholder and have no plan except more of the same.

Yahoo has been a non-competitive also ran to Google's IBM for too long. Now they want the shareholders to settle for second place and Google will formalize there non-competitive position by paying them not to compete. Well it looks like the Justice department might have something to say about that agreement. This combined with Balmer's expressing his undiminished love for Yahoo (the brand) not the BOD, tilts the balance in favor of Icahn he will get his board seats and in the end the deal will go through.