Deals
Icahn’s EBay Talks Show Boards Listening to Activists
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Corporate directors, who for years often dismissed activist investors as quick-profit seeking gadflys, are starting to listen when opinionated shareholders like Carl Icahn, Nelson Peltz and Mason Morfit come calling.
EBay Inc. pre-empted a public lashing from Icahn yesterday by disclosing his proposal to spin off its PayPal unit before he did. Peltz on Jan. 21 was invited to join the board of Mondelez International Inc., the food maker he once urged to merge with PepsiCo Inc. The same day, Dow Chemical Co. said it welcomes “all constructive input” as Daniel Loeb’s Third Point LLC took a stake and called for it to spin off a petrochemical business.