Since we last visited this subject, Yahoo! stopped talking to Microsoft, a deal was reached to place Google ads alongside Yahoo! search results (a move that has even Carl Icahn expressing cautious approval), and the Antitrust Subcommittee of the US Senate has stuck its nose into the deal.
As Jerry Yang said last week, “Clearly, it is time to move on.” And so we will move on to the main event in this months-long melodrama: the annual meeting of Yahoo! shareholders, now scheduled for August 1.
For all the heat and noise generated in recent months, and the ruckus to come in the next six weeks, the circus should present its climactic event at the annual meeting, when all will see whether Icahn’s proxy challenge prevails, the incumbent board is retained, or — in the most interesting potential scenario — a mix of Icahnites and incumbents is elected to the board.
I’m personally pulling for Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban — who made his fortune by selling broadcast.com to Yahoo! in 1999 — to get elected to the board, although I do not directly hold any shares in Yahoo!. Cuban, one of Icahn’s nominees, could liven up somnolent board meetings. I can see him yelling at his fellow directors, “I cannot believe you approved that equity compensation package for management! Everyone knows that was a flagrant foul!”
Chief Yahoo Jerry Yang just passed his first anniversary as CEO of the company he co-founded in 1995. After his receiving a public lashing by business columnist Joe Nocera of The New York Times last weekend, I’m inclined to believe that Yang would almost welcome the Icahn marauders to the Yahoo! board and let them pick a new CEO. No sensible person would care for the opprobrium that’s been heaped on Yang this year.
The ultimate irony in all this drama is that Yahoo! made a $10 million investment in 2000 that financially paid off handsomely for the company, but proved to be a strategic disaster. That was when the company invested in Google.
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