Public relationship breakdown
Carl Icahn has issued a statement putting forward his side of the events of late last week that Yahoo! said it was responding to in the statement we covered earlier.
In his press release, Icahn says “Over the years I have attempted to make changes at many companies but I have yet to see a company distort, omit and twist events and facts in the manner that Yahoo! has done in their press release issued Saturday night, July 12th.”
He goes on to say that he talked Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer into offering guaranteed revenue of $2.3 billion a year for five years and offers the following rebuttals to the Yahoo! press release:
a) Yahoo! in their Saturday night press release makes much of the fact that they were only given 24 hours to decide on the Microsoft offer because of the time constraints relating to the proxy fight, but neglects to mention that they were offered more time if they would be willing to postpone the annual meeting for a short period.
b) Yahoo! conveniently neglects in its press release to tell you about the extremely important above mentioned guarantees that Microsoft was willing to make;
c) Yahoo! tells you in their press release that a condition of the deal was the immediate replacement of the current board and removal of top management. Yahoo! neglected to mention we were willing to discuss keeping a number of the current board members and Jerry Yang as Chief Yahoo!
d) Yahoo tells you the Microsoft proposal precludes the potential sale of all Yahoo! however, they neglect to tell you that that train has left the station in that Microsoft is no longer willing to buy all of Yahoo! with the current board overseeing the company.
