• Silicon Alley Insider, Wednesday, June 11, 2008 11 AM

Silicon Alley Insider points to a very good reason why Carl Icahn is railing against Yahoo's expensive severance package: If the billionaire investor wins the proxy contest, that would trigger the plan. That means that whatever management moves Icahn makes would cost shareholders more money, placing greater pressure on Yahoo's stock. And since firing "Yahoos" is the first thing Icahn wants to do after assuming control, he now finds himself in a prickly situation.

Indeed, SAI's Henry Blodget thinks that Icahn is going to lose this proxy fight because the vulture-billionaire has no real plan for Yahoo other than selling to Microsoft, which is no longer interested, it seems, although he did recently say that if he couldn't sell to the software giant, he would pursue a deal with Google. In other words, Icahn wouldn't do much different than what Jerry Yang is currently doing now as Yahoo CEO. So what do Yahoo shareholders need Icahn and his expensive team of board replacements for?

The fact that large Yahoo shareholders like Gordie Crawford and Bill Miller haven't publicly backed Icahn are signs that the billionaire investor's plans may be dead in the water. Because of this, Blodget expects Icahn and his rich investor friends, sensing that they're fighting a battle that has no real upside even if they win, to start offloading their Yahoo shares any day now.

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