By saying "no" to Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT)'s buyout bid, Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) thought there would be no more distractions.
Maybe not.
Yahoo! now has a new pesky shareholder -- Carl Icahn, the shareholder activist -- who according to CNBC has accumulated a 50 million share stake in Yahoo. And it looks like Icahn is putting together a proxy fight.
Icahn loves to battle senior managers and boards. He has been doing this for decades, and seems to get better and better (and the deals get bigger and bigger).
He has a huge war chest (his personal fortune). He also has his own hedge fund, and more importantly, he has lots of credibility with the Street.
Icahn won't take any excuses from Yahoo!'s CEO, Jerry Yang. If anything, he's going to make Yang's life miserable, so as to pad his pockets.
In other words, just when it seemed things couldn't get more interesting, the Yahoo! saga has been elevated to a new level... of excitement.
Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook
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