Billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn resigns from Yahoo board

Carl Icahn, the billionaire and activist investor resigned from Yahoo's board yesterday saying that the company does not require an activist investor on the board any longer and praised the new management under Carol Bartz.

In May 2008, Icahn spearheaded a campaign to goad Yahoo shareholders to accept Microsoft's unsolicited $47.5-billion acquisition offer, which the Yahoo board had rejected (See: Icahn spearheads new move to enable acquisition of Yahoo! by Microsoft). 

After the collapse of talks between Microsoft and Yahoo, Icahn amassed a stake in the search engine and launched a proxy war to replace the Yahoo board and management including Yahoo co founder and CEO Jerry Yang. He said they had "botched" the Microsoft talks.

In a compromise reached between Microsoft and Yahoo in July 2008, Icahn called off hostilities in exchange for a seat with two of his nominees on the board. (See: Icahn to join Yahoo! board; calls-off proxy slate)

The settlement came just eleven days before Yahoo's annual shareholders meeting, at which Icahn had originally sought to replace the entire board with his own nominees and oust Yahoo CEO Yang.

The company, once the leader in Internet advertising, had been steadily losing share in the market for internet search to its larger rival Google, with whom Yahoo attempted to forge a non-exclusive ad search deal in June 2008, after Microsoft's acquisition offer. (See: Yahoo strikes $800-million ad deal with Google, ends talks with Microsoft)