Yahoo! chief Jerry Yang is likely to face tough questions from shareholders at the company’s annual meeting today – but they won’t be coming from billionaire activist Carl Icahn.
Icahn said yesterday he won’t show up at the meeting even though he still has disagreements over strategy with the board of directors and continues to hope Microsoft will come back to buy Yahoo!
Since Microsoft withdrew that offer, Yahoo!’s stock price has plunged 30 percent to leave the company’s market value nearly $20 billion below what shareholders would have been paid if Yang and the rest of the board had accepted the bid. Yahoo! closed at $19.89, off 14 cents yesterday.
But in true kiss-and-make-up form, Icahn said he is looking forward to working with Yang and Chairman Roy Bostock and “I have great hope this will be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
“The proxy fight is over and it will not do shareholders or Yahoo! any good to have the annual meeting turn into a media event for no purpose,” Icahn, who owns 70 million shares of the Internet pioneer, said yesterday.
Icahn and another member of his slate will get a seat on Yahoo!’s expanded 11-member board.
Former AOL executive Jonathan Miller is also expected to join the board and Yahoo! has two weeks to pick another candidate from Icahn’s slate, which includes former Viacom chief Frank Biondi Jr. and former Nextel Partners CEO John Chapple.
Despite the settlement with Icahn, several big Yahoo! shareholders including Gordon Crawford of Capital Research and Management are planning to withhold their votes for Yang and Bostock in a sign of dissatisfaction with the current management.
Crawford and other shareholders believe Yang botched the negotiations with Microsoft and doesn’t have a strategy to grow the company.
“With the proxy battle over, we’re looking for management to execute as it has various initiatives that could add to shareholder value, including its $1 [billion] share buyback,” said Canaccord Adams analyst Colin Gillis.