Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, a veteran of numerous proxy battles is thinking of mounting a proxy campaign to replace Yahoo Inc board members, according to a reliable source.
He wants both companies to come back to the negotiation table after Microsoft walked away from Yahoo a few days ago.
It is not known if other hedge funds will also join him in this campaign. Although not confirmed yet but Scott Galloway and his investment firm Firebrand Partners LLCA may jump in according to the Wall Street. The decision to run a proxy slate this year must be made by Thursday to qualify for the July 3 annual meeting.
A Yahoo spokesman declined to comment on Icahn’s potential moves while Microsoft said they were done with their pursuit of Yahoo.
On May 13, 2008 Carl Icahn purchased as many as 50 million shares of Yahoo or less than 4 percent of the company’s roughly 1.44 billion shares outstanding, leaning towards launching a proxy contest.
Last year he successfully got Oracle Corp to return to the bargaining table to buy BEA Systems after those talks collapsed.
Another one of his proxy battle was in 2004 when a pharmaceutical concern, Mylan Laboratories, in which he had shares decided to purchase King Pharmaceuticals of Bristol. In the end Mylan decided not to go ahead with the deal after Icahn threatened a proxy fight over acquisition.
Marc Weingarten, an attorney with Schulte Roth & Zabel and who has worked with Icahn before said:
The odds are pretty decent. Yahoo has a lot of unhappy shareholders. And if someone could press the company in getting something done, I would think there is a decent chance at a transaction.
One hedge fund manager who heads a large activist fund said it is “a likely possibility” that Icahn would run a Yahoo campaign. The manager, who has worked with Icahn on previous campaigns, asked to remain unidentified.
Should he decide to get involved, Icahn could be in a position to force the companies to restart the talks as he has got both money and experience.
Yahoo shares surged 5.1 percent after news of a possible Icahn move on Yahoo was reported by CNBC on Tuesday afternoon. The stock closed up $1.30 at $26.56 on Nasdaq.
0 responses so far
There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.
You must log in to post a comment.