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Icahn In Motorolas Business For Keeps

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by Kevin Maney
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Apr 07 2008 12:00am EDT

Icahn, In Motorola's Business for Keeps

The question for Motorola this morning: If you give a bully what he wants, does he go away? Not usually.

After pounding on Motorola until it fired CEO Ed Zander and split the company in two, Icahn has won two board seats. One of them will go to Keith Meister, who runs Icahn's investment funds and brings the valuable experience of having run a real estate company that invested in casinos and being a board member of American Railcar industries, which makes freight train cars. The other seat will go to Bill Hambrecht, respected tech investment banker who lately has been trying to start a professional football league called the United Football League.

In exchange for getting the seats, Icahn dropped his lawsuits and proxy fights. But you can bet he's not done. As he told The Wall Street Journal, he considers the board seats "a very positive step for Motorola in that shareholder representatives will have strong input into board decisions affecting the future of our company." In this case, of course, "shareholder representatives" means Carl Icahn.

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