Looks like the aging warlord finally decides its time to bite some wisdom and has announced that he’ll be absent from the shareholders meeting today. The reason for which he has pointed in his blog stating:
The proxy fight is over and it will not do shareholders or Yahoo! any good to have the annual meeting turn into a media event for no purpose.
The reason could very well be that Icahn realized its no use fighting over the issue of changing the Yahoo board and ousting Yang, since the ‘larger institutions’ needed to support the stand against the Yahoo board. He further added on his blog:
it is extremely difficult to oust an entire board, no matter how strongly a large number of shareholders feel about the board’s previous actions.
Though the words clearly point at his unhappiness over the issue but the aging billionaire has made sure he leaves no loose ends and stated that he decided to stay aloof from the matter as all it would have done was to create a wider gap between the two groups. Why would he even argue for such a thing? I mean had he won a minority position going in with a fight, he would have had to face immense criticism and even being ‘boxed out’ by the majority that still controlled the board.
Icahn pointed out at the compromise with Yahoo, saying:
that any meaningful transaction, including the strategy in dealing with that transaction, will be fully discussed with the entire board before any final decision is made.
So this means that Icahn will emerge whenever there is a transaction in place and he would be out with his sword ‘if’ such favorable transaction is overlooked by the board (which targets Yang specifically I can bet).
However the fight has pretty much dead for the time being and hopes are that the present teaming up will work out plans to bring Yahoo back on tracks to success. As Icahn says:
this will be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
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