Carl Icahn favors Yahoo-Microsoft deal
As the rumors fly that Yahoo and Microsoft are very near to reaching a deal on a search partnership, Yahoo activist board member Carl Icahn continues his advocacy of such a deal.
Icahn, who owns about 5 percent of Yahoo’s stock, pulled very hard for a much broader deal to be reached between the two companies during the courtship that ended about a year ago. He felt that a straight merger / takeover between the two companies would be good for both, and that the combined companies could leapfrog over competitors such as Google. He is still very much in that mind-space. Icahn said Friday in an interview with Reuters, “I’ve been a strong advocate of getting a search deal done with Microsoft. It would enhance value if a deal got done, because of the synergies involved.”
Reports are coming out now that the two companies are getting extremely close to making a deal. Apparently, three key Microsoft executives (Yusuf Mehdi, Satya Nadella, and Qi Lu) are in Silicon Valley, deep in conversation with Yahoo representatives. On-line reports are surfacing that the deal could be done in less than a week, according to a CNET article.
Rumors indicate that the current deal is much smaller than the Microsoft $47.5 billion takeover bid for Yahoo, but is still significant. As a part of that takeover battle, Icahn started a proxy war in an attempt to take over the Yahoo board. He did not get everything that he wanted, but did end up with a seat on the Yaboo Board of Directors, plus an expanded board size with two of Icahn’s hand-picked candidates, plus the ousting of Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang.
Although the earlier Microsoft acquisition deal failed, informal talks have continued from that date forward. Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer have both said that they are in favor of some more limited deal in the search arena. The emergence of Microsoft’s Bing onto the search scene seems to make such a deal more likely. Of course we have gotten clear to the aisle before, just to have the wedding called off.
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July 24th, 2009
Let me tell you icahn is a snake. Look what he did as majority owner of twa. in the agreement he could open a travel agency and sell tickets cheaper than twa could in his contract. My guess ichan will sell of the search engine for his 25.00 a share and a seat on the board of microsoft getting millions in free shares a year while yahoo will fall to the wayside. It would be like aol powered search by google.. I cant bring myself to trust him.