Industry Expert Blogs

Fri, 2011-02-18 14:29 — Gabe Moretti

Mentor has made the latest move in this bizarre game between it and billionaire investor Carl Icahn. It has moved up the release of its fourth quarter results eight days, from March 4 to February 24. Mentor said it expects the results to show growth in the quarter and the first profitable year in the last three years.

Good news is better served hot, or so thinks Mentor. This will give the outside directors of the Board a better climate in which to consider the proposal by Casablanca Capital and Carl Icahn for up to six outside directors proposed by them, three by Casablanca and three by Icahn. In any event it will be hard for those directors to oppose the candidacy of Gary Myers, proposed by Carl Icahn. Gary has been a success in EDA, and holds other board positions within EDA. With over 14% of the stock, Carl is certainly entitled to at least a representative on the Mentor board. But one, or even two board positions are not enough to change the outcome. And Carl is not likely to go away, so it is a stalemate.

It is interesting to note that each of the eight outside directors on the Mentor board own less than 1% of Mentor stock. In fact none of them owns more than 100,000 shares according to the latest proxy statement available. If this was a logical operation both Casablanca and Icahn would have at least one seat each on the board.

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