Icahn tells Yahoo to sell for $49.5B, or $34.375 a share
SAN FRANCISCO -- "Why don't you stop dancing around the subject and publicly offer to sell the company to Microsoft for $34.375 per share and promise to cooperate completely?" Icahn said in the strongly worded letter.
Yahoo said declaring an acceptable sales price for the company would be "ill-advised."
Microsoft declined comment. It withdrew an oral offer of $47.5 billion, or $33 a share, last month after Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang asked for $37 a share.
Icahn's letter was just the latest volley in an increasingly nasty campaign to force Yahoo's sale.
In a letter on Wednesday, Icahn made it clear he wants Yahoo's board replaced and Yang fired unless the company works out a deal with Microsoft before Yahoo's shareholders meeting Aug. 1.
Icahn, who carved a reputation as a ruthless corporate raider in the 1980s and reinvented himself as a shareholder activist in recent years, was particularly miffed by what he claimed was a provision by Yahoo that would add more than $2 billion to the cost of a takeover.
In his letter Wednesday, Icahn accused Yahoo's management and board of putting themselves ahead of their shareholders.
Some tech analysts say Icahn is merely softening up Yahoo in the weeks leading up to its shareholders meeting in San Jose. If Yahoo staves off Icahn, it faces a torrent of lawsuits from disgruntled shareholders, says Jonathan Yarmis, an analyst at AMR Research.
"I'll bet after the shareholders meeting — if there's no deal done — you'd have a hard time booking a hotel room in Wilmington, Del., as plaintiffs' lawyers line up to file their lawsuits," Yarmis says.
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