14 DAY TRIAL // T. Boone Pickens, an investor who bought 10 million Yahoo! shares in May, hoping that an agreement with Microsoft would make him rich, has sold his entire acquisition. The reason is the same one that generated a lot of ink and also concerns among Yahoo! directors, who, for a while, were not so sure anymore whether they would be part of the board set to be elected on August 1.
Pickens entered the I.T. share market after Carl Icahn, another investor in Yahoo!, started a proxy fight to either lead Jerry Yang and his board to accept a Microsoft proposal or make room for another slate of directors. Either option would have been reasonable for the investor. A 33 or more American dollars per share, as Microsoft was close to offer, would have made Pickens glad that he chose Yahoo! to invest in. The other situation - Icahn's coup of removing the current board of directors and replacing them with his right-hand men would have probably allowed Pickens to be one of the new directors at Yahoo!.
None of these happened, as Icahn came to a settlement with Yang, Bostock and their affiliates. Unfortunately for the stockholders of the company, after negotiations between Yahoo! and Microsoft really came to a close, the price share dramatically decreased, falling short of exceeding a $20-21 level. The situation is expected to get back on the right track as soon as the new board of directors settles in and all the fluster is gone.
Still, the investor, fearing a greater recession, decided to sell all of his Yahoo! shares. As the San Francisco Chronicle reports, he could not refrain his anger at the directors of the Sunnyvale company. "I think that Yahoo management was pathetic," he is quoted to have said after selling his shares. In view of the current value, the investor has probably lost good money.