Yahoo: You're a Manipulator, Mr. Icahn

The Yahoo-Microsoft cum Yahoo-Icahn drama continues, with very little if any progress, but quite a bit more sniping 'ore the redoubts. This time, it's Yahoo giving the master of the hostile takeover a tongue-lashing.

Icahn — who is currently buying up billions in Yahoo shares behind a bid fellow-billioneer Rupert Murdoch called "not serious" — had a thing or two to say to Yahoo last week, accusing them, among other things, of poisoning Microsoft's bid with the infamous employee-protection plan, and pledging to continue his fight to oust Yahoo's board and send CEO Jerry Yang to the unemployment office. Not to be outdone, Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock shot back last Thursday with allegations that Icahn "seriously misrepresents and manipulates the facts" about the Yahoo-Microsoft talks, and that a plan to do anything more than sell the company to a now-uninterested buyer is "conspicuously absent."

Bostock went on to question what Icahn and his bunker-busting board would do if his plan to reignite talks with Microsoft went belly up, and characterized Icahn's invective against the company's recently-adopted severance plan as "just plain wrong." All in all, the battle seems to be heading for a lively showdown at the company's August shareholder meeting — a battle we'll be covering with unveiled anticipation.