• The Wall Street Journal, Wednesday, May 14, 2008 11 AM

CNBC on Tuesday reported that billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who unsuccessfully tried to overthrow the Time Warner board in 2005, has accumulated as many as 50 million Yahoo shares (about 3.5% of the company's total). Icahn has a history of buying significant stakes in companies he feels are undervalued with the intention of replacing their board. He's not always successful, however. Icahn's most recent proxy failure came in a battle for control of phone maker Motorola.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the billionaire investor will decide whether to pursue a proxy contest against Jerry Yang and the Yahoo board later today, but he doesn't have much time, as the deadline to file a substitute slate of directors is tomorrow. So, either Icahn has been secretly assembling his own slate, or he's planning to use his financial muscle to prod Yang and co. into selling to Microsoft. CNBC suggested that Icahn might instead aim for a few Yahoo board seats, which he would use as leverage to get Yang to sell. If, of course, Microsoft still wants to buy the company.

Read the whole story at The Wall Street Journal »