Carl Icahn has announced the nominees for his board of Yahoo!:

Mark Cuban – Sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo! in 1999 for $8.1 billion in stock.

John Chapple – Former CEO of Nextel Partners, with a telecommunications investment fund.

Lucian Bebchuk – Harvard Law professor and director of Harvard’s program on corporate governance

Edward Meyer – Former CEO of Grey Global Group, the worldwide advertising agency.

Keith Meister – Icahn’s own vice chairman. He was also added to Motorola’s board last month as part of the agreement to avoid a proxy battle with Icahn.

Brian Posner - Former CEO of asset management firm, Clearbridge Advisors LLC.

Adam Dell - brother of Michael, the founder of Dell Computers. He was previously a major shareholder of HotJobs.com, which Yahoo! bought for $439 million in 2002.

Robert Shaye – founder of New Line Cinema and still co-CEO.

Frank Biondi Jr – Former CEO of Viacom Inc. Also a director of Amgen, Cablevision Systems, Hasbro, The Bank of New York Mellon and Seagate Technology.

And the tenth member:
Carl Icahn himself – 72-year-old investor, and corporate shaker.

As anticipated, Carl Icahn has begun his proxy battle with Yahoo!

In an open letter to Yahoo chairman, Roy Bostock, Icahn said the board had “acted irrationally and lost the faith of shareholders and Microsoft. It is obvious that Microsoft’s bid of $33 per share is a superior alternative than Yahoo’s prospects on a stand alone basis.”

He went on to urge Yahoo! to “move expeditiously to negotiate a merger with Microsoft, thereby making a proxy fight unnecessary.”

Alongside his support from Bill Miller, Icahn’s move has further support from at least one other major shareholder, Paulson & Co. with a 3.4 percent stake in Yahoo!

But Microsoft are showing no signs of returning to the table. Yesterday, Microsoft spokesman, Frank Shaw said simply “The company has moved on”.

Its final offer of $33 wasn’t enough to satisfy Yahoo!’s co-founder and Chief Executive Jery Yang, who wanted $37 per share, even though shares had been trading at around $19 prior to that.

For the current share price, and its movement over the last 5 days, see below.

HAVE YOUR SAY: What do you think the future holds for Yahoo!? Drop me a comment…

“To the extent he can get the parties back to the table I’d be all in favour of that”, he said.

Miller’s endorsement indicates a significant portion of Yahoo! is leaning towards the Microsoft deal.

It is one thing for a board to have pressure from its shareholders, yet another to have that pressure intensified by a rush of new shareholders.

Yahoo!’s shareprice will start at $27.14 this morning. Interesting to see how it moves through the day…

This is how it stands currently, and a chart of the past 5 days (delayed 15 mins)…:

<a href=”http://finance.yahoo.com” mce_href=”http://finance.yahoo.com”>Yahoo! Finance</a><br /><a href=”http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=YHOO/” mce_href=”http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=YHOO/”>Quote for YHOO/</a>

Although we’re told that Microsoft have given no indication that they will resume talks with Yahoo!, Icahn now has the power to replace the Yahoo! board with one which will be more open to the takeover bid.

Bill Miller’s endorsement means that few would stand in his way if he chose to do that, but he hasn’t got long.

The news over the next few days will be vital to the future of the whole Internet industry. Watch this space…

Many senior Internet Industry exectutives and investors are currently waiting to hear the decision of this man…

No matter how small or big you consider your online business to be – (it may be so small that you don’t even think you have one – or so big that you’re even involved in this latest saga I’m discussing here) – either way, I’ll be interested to hear what you think of Carl Icahn’s recent move on Yahoo!

In the 10 days since Microsoft pulled out of of its $47.3bn offer, which valued Yahoo! at $33-a-share, Carl Icahn has bought a stake of approximately 3.6%.

Considering his purchase price was somewhere around $25, a 3.6% stake will have cost him around $1.2 billion.

This is a man with a personal fortune of $14 billion or so, so pitting 1.2 of it on Yahoo! in its current crisis is bold. Perhaps we should expect nothing less from the real-life Gordon Gekko of Wall Street… Who remembers his infamous hostile takeover of TWA in 1985?

But there is something very significant about buying such a stake at this time: It gives him the option to launch a proxy battle and ultimately to remove members from Yahoo!’s board in favour of directors who support his own views.

And guess what they are…

To accept Microsoft’s offer.

If he can sell his Yahoo! shares for $33 then his personal gain will be around half a billion dollars. And it could all happen in a matter of days.

Perhaps its a shame he doesn’t have better intentions for the troubled pioneering search engine than to feed his bulging pockets.

Or perhaps we should just celebrate and cheer-on such flagrant capitalism…

Lets watch what happens over the coming days – if nothing else, his move is certain to bring the players back to the table, and it will make interesting viewing…

What’s your view? What have I missed? Leave your comment below…