Tag Archives: Carl Icahn
Yahoo! May Have Gotten Away From Microsoft, If It Wasn’t For That Meddling Icahn!
“To the extent he can get the parties back to the table I’d be all in favor of that,” stated Legg Mason Inc. portfolio manager and Yahoo!’s second-largest shareholder, Bill Miller. “But there’s some risk that Yahoo management will become tied up with Icahn or other shareholders and is distracted.”
Carl Icahn, one of today’s most aggressive investors is plotting to buy up some Yahoo! stock and bring Microsoft back into negotiations. Since Microsoft’s bid on the search engine company, Carl Icahn bought 50 million shares in the Sunnyvale, Calif. Yahoo! Inc. TOmorrow, Icahn was given a deadline to submit a list of alternative board of directors to oppose Yahoo!’s board at the July 3 meeting. Will Yang still remain CEO after all of this? We’ll find out in 2 months.
Icahn is notorious for putting the pressure on struggling companies to seek ways to stay afloat or absorb themselves into large companies.
Icahn’s net worth is $14 billion and he is the 46th richest man in the world. Icahn is especially known for his investments in Trans World Airlines, ACF Industries, American Railcar Industries, Motorola, Blockbuster, Philip Services, Marvel Comics, BEA Systems (acquired by Oracle), and Lear Corporation.
Will Microsoft reopen their checkbook for Yahoo!? Stay tuned.
Information Source:
[1] WSJ: Icahn Buys Yahoo Shares; Mulls Board Proxy Contest by Gregory Zuckerman and Kevin J. Delaney
Categories Carl Icahn, Microsoft Corporation, Yahoo!
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True Synergy: Discovery Channel Acquiring HowStuffWorks.com For $250 Million
“We’re way behind in new media and digital,”stated David Zaslav, CEO of Discovery Communications Inc. “I don’t think we win just by building vertically.”
Discovery Communications Inc. announced today that they will acquire HowStuffWorks.com for $250 million. HowStuffWorks receives roughly 3.8 million unique U.S. visitors per month. HowStuffWorks also has 11 million users globally.
HowStuffWorks is known to be a website for answering through-provoking questions such as How Roller Coasters Work, How Submarines Work, How Your Brain Works, etc. HowStuffWorks claims that the acquisition by Discovery Communications for HowStuffWorks is a giant experiment to test whether its possible to combine the best things about TV and about the Web to create something that is a sum greater than its parts.
HowStuffWorks’ text content will be embedded into Discovery Channel’s 100,000 hours of documentaries and video footage. Discovery Communications has over 100 networks that reaches 1.5 billion viewers across the world interested in learning more about science. There is a sample of media integration between Discovery and HowStuffWorks on the page about How Shark Attacks Work.
HowStuffWorks was founded by Marshall Brain, a professor at North Carolina State University in 1998. The Convex Group acquired HowStuffWorks in 2002. The Convex Group is an investment company founded buy Jeff Arnold, former CEO of WebMD. Carl Icahn also owns stake in HowStuffWorks. Carl Icahn is in the top 100 world’s richest people, net worthed at $8.7 billion, generated by his own hedge fund and ownership in various companies.
Information Source:
[1] Wall Street Journal: Discovery Plans to Buy Web Site