Consider it confirmed: Carl Icahn wants to stick ten new men on Yahoo’s board of directors. Icahn’s even gone so far as to provide their names and biographies, and the men constitute a rather interesting collection.
About 2,500 words’ worth of information sums the group up in Icahn’s letter to Yahoo’s chairman, but we’ll try to be more concise. To start with, there’s Icahn himself – billionaire, corporate raider, and so on. His background’s come up more than once in the past week.
Lucian A. Bebchuk heads up an alphabetical list of the others. Bebchuk appears to be extremely well-educated, holding degrees from Harvard Law School and the Harvard Economics Department. He’s written a number of articles for influential publications, and was placed on a list of the “100 Most Influential People In Finance” by Treasury & Risk Management.
Frank J. Biondi, Jr. spent time at both Harvard and Princeton, currently serves as a director of five different companies, and acts as senior managing director of a sixth. John H. Chapple also graduated from a Harvard program, and possesses extensive – really, really extensive – experience in the telecommunications industry.
Next comes Mark Cuban, who’s best known in the non-tech world for his basketball team and televised dancing. But Icahn notes that Cuban co-founded Broadcast.com, and then stayed connected until it was acquired by Yahoo.
Adam Dell is a multitasking businessman, and Edward H. Meyer and Brian S. Posner seem to be much the same. Keith Meister deserves special mention because he’s spent the past four or so years working at Icahn’s companies, and is yet another Harvard man.
Finally, we arrive at Robert Shaye. Icahn states, “Robert Shaye is Co-Chairman and Co-CEO of New Line Cinema,” and for better or for worse, past tense should apply. But Shaye co-founded New Line Cinema, and has been connected with films all the way from “A Nightmare on Elm Street” to “The Lord of the Rings.”
The ten are smart, successful men, obviously, having a lot to do with Harvard and perhaps fewer connections to search and advertising. For all sorts of reasons, it’ll be interesting to see if Icahn can get them inside Yahoo.
