A word on today’s announcement

Posted July 21st, 2008 at 6:15 pm by Jerry Yang, CEO & Chief Yahoo

 6 Comments / Filed in: Trends & News

Today, Yahoo! moves past a distracting proxy contest. This morning we announced a settlement with Carl Icahn which will enable Yahoo! to put an end to this challenging chapter in our history, and allow us to get back to the business at hand – building our business and maximizing value for all stockholders.

Over the past few weeks we’ve made progress communicating with investors, helping them to better understand our roadmap for long-term growth, our valuable combination of assets, and our solid position in the converging search and display marketplaces. These discussions have been productive for everyone.

Under the terms of the settlement with Mr. Icahn, he has withdrawn his nominees for consideration at the annual meeting, and has agreed to vote his Yahoo! shares in support of the Board’s nominees. At our annual stockholder meeting on Aug. 1, we’ll ask stockholders to re-elect eight of our current directors. (In connection with the settlement of the proxy contest, Bobby Kotick has notified the Company that he will not stand for re-election to the Board.) After the annual meeting, Mr. Icahn will be appointed to our Board. We’ve also agreed to expand our Board to make room for two additional members to be chosen by the Board upon the recommendation of the Board’s Nominating and Governance Committee from a list that includes the rest of Mr. Icahn’s slate and Jon Miller, former Chairman and CEO of AOL.

We’re pleased that both parties were able to work together productively to accomplish this settlement, and we look forward to working with the new Board members and benefiting from their fresh perspective.

Yahoo! is now moving forward with one team and one voice, and we’re excited about what the future holds.

Jerry Yang
CEO and Chief Yahoo

Tagged: carl icahn, news

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6 Comments Add your own

Steve | July 22nd, 2008 at 12:15 am

Good Luck Jerry, I just hope Yahoo breaks Google Monopoly.They are just becoming evil and same is the case with Microsoft.Yahoo is my favorite search engine :)

Dominic | July 22nd, 2008 at 9:46 am

As a shareholder, I’d prefer it if the board was made up of people who actually were voted in. I don’t believe one guy with 5% of the stock should get three board seats handed to him without demonstrable support from the majority of shareholders.

Mr. Icahn talks a lot about the governance problems in America and the lack of corporate democracy on the one hand, and then does a completely different thing by accepting this deal.

And Yahoo!’s board has no place making deals like this without consulting all of its shareholders via an open vote. For all we know, Mr. Icahn and his slate would not have won a single seat.

=bg= | July 22nd, 2008 at 4:44 pm

Jerry, Yahoo! is an iconic brand on the Net. Keep doing what you’re doing- you invented it, you should have the chance to bring it back to the top spot. I believe in your efforts.

David Meng | July 24th, 2008 at 3:30 am

Didn’t Yahoo try this with that other so called Corporate Executive that Jerry took over from. Just because someone has the “blessing of wall street and Carl Icahn” means nothing nothing at all. Icahn bought into Blockbuster and through his “superior expertise” ran in right into the ground.

Jerry do not let Icahn do that to Yahoo. Carl Icahn is just a robber baron that is how he became a Billionaire.
As with the comments by Dominic, Icahn should not have a say in the company anymore than the shareholder that owns 10 shares. If he wants to try to let him buy all the stock. But before he does that I would send Jerry a private note on what to do so that Jerry could regain control of the search engine business again.

James | July 24th, 2008 at 7:05 pm

Jerry, the Yahoo! board is going to get sued for breaching its fiduciary duty to shareholders. The stock is trading around 21 and MSFT offerd 33 per share. What is going on around there?

todd | July 29th, 2008 at 12:28 pm

Hang in there, Yahoo!, hang in there. Say “NO” to Microsoft, “Slim” Pickens, and Icahn’t.

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