Icahn loses bid for Motorola seat

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn failed to win a seat on Motorola Inc.’s board after a three-month campaign in a victory for Chief Executive Ed Zander.

The world’s second-largest mobile-phone maker gave the preliminary results in a statement Monday after its annual meeting in Chicago and said the final tally might take a few weeks.

Icahn had said Monday that he did not expect to win a seat on the Motorola board because three or four large mutual fund shareholders were likely to vote against him.

“I think it’s going to be relatively close,” Icahn told more than 500 shareholders at the meeting at the Art Institute of Chicago, adding that he thought he had secured support from small funds and small shareholders. “I probably won’t win.”

Icahn, 71, has taken roughly a 3% stake in Motorola since he revealed plans in late January to seek a board seat.

The “jury is still out” on Zander, and his team has until the end of this year to revive the company, Icahn said. “We gave them a wake-up call,” he said in an interview after the meeting.

Motorola’s management has come under increasing criticism in recent quarters as the company struggled with weak cellphone sales that caused it to post a first-quarter loss.

Icahn had initially said he wanted Schaumburg, Ill.-based Motorola to do a large share buyback. But after the company said last quarter that its 2007 outlook was bleaker than expected, Icahn changed his position. He said fixing Motorola’s operational problems took precedence over repurchasing shares.

Motorola had urged shareholders not to vote for the activist investor, saying Icahn was already on too many boards and lacked experience in the wireless industry.