Icahn on Yahoo board

Date Posted: 31 July 2008

The well-published and failed attempts by Microsoft to take over Yahoo might happen after Carl Icahn got nominated onto the Yahoo board. Icahn owns 5% of Yahoo and backed the recent Microsoft takeover plans. He had proposed a complete board replacement but he only achieved enlarging the board by 2 additional members from his slate.

This move might prove those who now think Icahn will be strong enough to control the board and persuade them to sell Yahoo to Microsoft, or, that Icahn’s relationship with Microsoft has cooled. The latter is not very likely though.

Microsoft signalled that they still want to purchase the ‘Search’ function, or the whole company.

BrandIndex’s ‘Buzz’ score for Yahoo stays stable in July, sitting around 3-5%. The Corporate measure, however, shows a different picture. Corporate scores for Yahoo are falling slowly but surely starting from 17% at the end of June, decreasing to 12% -14% at the middle of July and finishing July with 10%.

BrandIndex will follow the events surrounding Yahoo and Microsoft with interest.

Agi Zabo, BrandIndex Research Executive

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