Week In Tech History – 6-01-09 – Icahn vs. Yahoo
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It was an interesting week of poising as Yahoo and Carl Icahn butted heads over the impending proxy battle for sale of Yahoo to Microsoft. Yahoo was doing everything in it’s power while Icahn made some general statements about CEO Jerry Yang. As the week went on, the mud started to fly.
Yahoo started the volley – but not by Yahoo’s choice. A court document was unsealed in where it outlined the plans for Yahoo to create a plan to pay workers if a takeover happens. Yahoo was going to provide “100 percent equity acceleration for everyone.” A claim that Yahoo might not be able to cover, depending on how the proceedings went.
In the meantime, Carl Icahn stepped up his campaign by making public his plans for Yahoo. It included a reorganization of the Board of Directors, but up until then, it was just a general statement. This week he basically said that CEO Jerry Yang needed to step down.
Yahoo made a statement later in the day and set their Shareholders’ meeting for August 1st, 2008. This would give both parties to wheel and deal for a happy medium.
This was one of many events in the Week in Tech history. Check out all the events in the podcast.