Icahn Gets His Men at Motorola
by Mike Farrell -- Multichannel News, 4/14/2008 2:00:00 AM
Whoever said firing off snarky letters to top management never got anyone anywhere obviously wasn't thinking of Carl Icahn, the activist investor who has been threatening a proxy battle with Motorola for the past few months. After weeks of battling, Motorola acceded to one of Icahn's biggest demands, naming a top Icahn lieutenant to its board of directors.
Motorola last week agreed to appoint two of Icahn's recommendations to the board: Icahn Investments managing director Keith Meister and investment banker William Hambrecht. Icahn's other two nominees — former Viacom CEO Frank Biondi and MIT professor Lionel Kimerling — were not named, but in securing Meister's place on the Motorola board, Icahn won a major victory. In return, Icahn pledged to drop his proxy fight against the company.
Originally, Motorola had rejected Meister's appointment, claiming he did not “qualify.”
That prompted Icahn to fire off a letter to Motorola management stating, “What does one have to do to qualify — lose $37 billion?”
That might be the last of Icahn's snarky statements about management. According to the agreement filed with the SEC on April 8, Icahn pledged that as long as Meister and/or Hambrecht are on the board, he will not make “announcements that constitute an ad hominem attack on the company, its officers or its directors.”
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