• Blogging Stocks, Wednesday, January 24, 2007 11:33 AM

A little more than a year ago, billionaire investor/hostile takeover master Carl Icahn set his sights on uprooting Time Warner's executive board, with the goal of breaking up the beleaguered media giant in order to boost its value for shareholders.

He said Time Warner's stock, stuck for a long time at around $17 per share, should be closer to $22 or $24 per share. Well, Icahn's takeover bid failed, but a year later, Time Warner is now out of the rut, and its stock price is now hovering at about $22.50.

In August 2005, Icahn announced his intention to organize a shareholder revolt, saying Time Warner's stock wouldn't budge, due mainly to the media giant's inability to do anything about AOL. We'll never know to what extent Icahn's bid to remake the company affected what later happened with AOL, but either way, its business makeover has proved to be the catalyst to higher value for shareholders. Ultimately, the stock price got where Icahn (and shareholders) wanted it to go. And it only took a year (and a lot of guts on the part of Time Warner executives).

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