FTC approves Icahn's Yahoo stock purchase

By Ed Oswald | Published June 2, 2008, 3:01 PM

The Federal Trade Commission has given activist investor Carl Icahn approval to purchase a large chunk of Yahoo stock, it said on Friday.

The FTC is required under current rules to give its approval to large purchases of stock, and for Carl Icahn, that approval came Friday (PDF available here). Icahn currently owns a little over four percent of Yahoo, valued at around $1 billion USD.

With the additional purchase of stock, which totals about $1.5 billion, Icahn will own close to 11% of Yahoo, which gives him quite a bit of say in the business of the company.

Yahoo is prepping itself for the fight, having already delayed its annual shareholders meeting to later in July. It is also apparently talking to Microsoft about a deal that essentially stops just short of a buyout.

Icahn, long a thorn in many a troubled company's side, seems to be successful in rallying shareholder discontent over Yahoo's direction. Including his own slate of directors, as many as 30 people could be vying for positions on Yahoo's board.

Comments

Oh boy.

My girlfriend LOVES Yahoo. She uses it as her primary e-mail account. It's her search engine of choice. In fact, she doesn't even type URLs into her address bar, she types them into Yahoo and clicks the results. (She has an aversion to URL history, don't ask.)

So, thanks, Icahn. Now I have to put up with her frothing at the mouth until, during and after the inevitible.

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Sorry in advance:

Icahn has Yahoo stok plz?

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buys it and u can has it

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Yahoo is dead

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