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July 21, 2008

A little over a month ago, Wall Street raider Carl Icanh approached Yahoo's board and tried to convince its management to accept Microsoft's offer to acquire all the outstanding shares of Yahoo. Icanh already is a major Yahoo shareholder, and would stand to gain if Microsoft's deal would go through.

However, more Yahoo shareholders have banded together to form "The Yahoo Plan B Group".

It's composed of 150 Yahoo stockholders that, together, directly own about 3.2 million Yahoo shares, and they are set to ask the current Yahoo board to accept a compromise executive team which will be composed of five current Yahoo Board members and four nominees from the Icahn group.

Eric Jackson of Ironfire Capital and also the leader of the Yahoo Plan B said:

“It’s become very clear over the last fifteen days that many Yahoo shareholders are very reluctant to support the entire list of Icahn nominees.”

Mr. Jackson would then call on Plan B members to re-elect 5 current Yahoo Board directors which includes: Jerry Yang, Vyomesh Joshi, Robert Kotick, Maggie Wilderotter and Gary Wilson.

While those nominated by Icahn would include: Adam Dell, Edward Meyer, John Chapple and Lucian Bebchuk.

As for his reasons for the proposed board line-up, Mr. Jackson said:

“Overall, we are confident that this new Yahoo board can effectively conclude a deal with Microsoft.”

With all the turmoil that Jerry Yang and his current executive board have gone through in the past few months, some say that such compromise would seem rather bleak at the moment.

For its part, Yahoo has clearly stated what it wants to happen come August 1st.

Additionally, with the support from another large Yahoo investor group, maybe Jerry Yang would give Mr. Jackson’s proposal a serious thought.

In the mean time, the ongoing Yahoo shareholder episode goes on...

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    This article was featured on Business 5.0.

Source: Yahoo.