Icahn May Lose Fight To Control Time Warner
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn may have failed to win enough support to take control of Time Warner.
Mr. Icahn may nominate five directors to Time Warner’s board, fewer than the 14 he had planned and not enough to gain control of the company, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unidentified people familiar with the plans. New York-based Time Warner and Mr. Icahn may be nearing a settlement, the newspaper said.
Any scale back in Mr. Icahn’s plans would be a victory for the chief executive of Time Warner, Richard Parsons, who is resisting the investor’s push to split the company into four parts. Mr. Icahn may not have convinced enough people to join his fight, or he may have decided to settle for smaller changes to improve his chances of success, said Greg Taxin, president of Glass, Lewis and Co., a proxy advisory service.
“Either he was unsuccessful in recruiting a sufficient number of qualified and talented people, or he is conceding he cannot gain enough support to replace the entire board and seek more modest changes,” Mr. Taxin, who is based in San Francisco and spoke before the Wall Street Journal report, said. “It’s possible in a company that big that seeking more modest changes increases your chance of getting a result.”
Mr. Icahn may nominate former Viacom Inc. CEO Frank Biondi to chair Time Warner’s board. A Time Warner spokesman, Ed Adler, declined to comment. Mr. Icahn didn’t return calls seeking comment.
