Icahn gets on board at Yahoo! - so what's next?

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 22 July 2008 04:54

IT Industry - Strategy

The Yahoo! board has reached an accommodation with investor Carl Icahn that will see one of their number step down. Hint: It's not Bostock or Yang.

The agreement between the company and Yahoo! removes Icahn's threat to run a slate of directors in a proxy contest at the Yahoo! annual meeting on August 1. But he and two of his supporters will join the board.

Here's how the deal works:

Icahn's proposed board withdraws their nominations.

Current director Robert Kotick withdraws his nomination.

Icahn votes his almost 5 percent of Yahoo! stock in favour of re-electing the remaining board members.

The re-elected board expands its size from nine to 11 members.

The board appoints Icahn as a member.

The board's nominating and governance committee selects two new members from among the remaining members of Icahn's slate plus former chairman and CEO of AOL, Jonathan Miller.

Miller was fired from his position at AOL in November 2006. The Washington Post described Miller as a "strategy guy" whose changes led to a 46 percent increase in advertising sales with changes that allowed the company to compete with Yahoo! and Google. Despite that, he was replaced by "operations guy" Randy Falco.

So who threw Miller's hat into the ring? Find out on page 2.