Icahn Abandons Bid To Prevent Dell From Going Private

Via El Reg comes news that Carl Icahn has, after a brief battle with Michael Dell for control over the company, thrown in the towel. From the article: "Icahn said in an open letter to shareholders that he still thought that Big Mike's $13.88 per share offer for the firm undervalued it, but had decided that it would be 'almost impossible' to win the battle at the shareholder vote on Thursday. 'I realize that some stockholders will be disappointed that we do not fight on,' he wrote. 'However, over the last decade, mainly through "activism," we have enhanced stockholder value in many companies by billions of dollars. We did not accomplish this by waging battles that we thought we would lose.'"

interesting bit missing from tfs

[Anonymous Coward]

a main reason why unca carl gave up is that the dell board of directors played like washington politics in __changing the rules of the vote__ so that it (the upcoming vote to approve a buyout bid) favors dell's takeover bid over his... another is that carl's choice of ceo (name unknown, never released publicly?) backed out at last minute.

Re:interesting bit missing from tfs

[Xest]

I'd imagine the fact Carl is a fucking dick that no one wanted ruining the opportunity to fix Dell for the sake of a quick buck played a fairly large part in that.