Icahn thinks he can

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Carl the Barbarian is at Yahoo’s gate. Will Jerry Yang let him in?

Yahoo’s chief executive, who has clung to the company he co-founded, may not have a choice. When Carl Icahn wants something, he often gets it. He has a huge war chest and an unquenchable thirst for corporate warfare.

The relentless 1980s corporate raider who helped turn ‘greenmail’ into a takeover art by shaking up sluggish companies has transformed himself into a proxy prince. This self-styled shareholder activist targets companies with questionable strategies but loads of cash and undervalued assets and forces them to buy back chunks of stock, generating returns for little investors.

But don’t mistake him for a populist. ‘He hates everybody,’ said marketing and management consultant Mark Stevens, who wrote a book about him called ‘King Icahn.’

In Yahoo’s case, Icahn is looking to pressure...

... the Internet pioneer to succumb to Microsoft’s advances, which it spurned earlier this month. In a letter to Yahoo’s board, Icahn says he has the backing of shareholders to unseat it.

And that was just the opening salvo.

Analysts are divided on whether Icahn can succeed in selling Yahoo to Microsoft. Either way, this is probably good news for shareholders, Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay said in a report :

Yahoo is unlikely to underestimate Icahn. He has assembled a team of deal-makers who are as cunning as he is. They have an uncanny knack for picking targets, even when those picks fly in the face of the conventional wisdom on Wall Street.

Let the games begin.

-- Jessica Guynn