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Details of Yahoo's poison-pill employee severance package, designed to deter a Microsoft aquisition, were revealed with the release of documents from the shareholder lawsuit pending in Delaware courts. Yahoo estimated the cost of post-acquisition layoffs as up to $2.1 billion; raider Carl Icahn, who's trying to force a sale to Microsoft, put the figure at $2.5 billion under the plan, according to the Wall Street Journal. Remarked Icahn, who thinks the details revealed will help him in his question to unseat Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang:

How can Yahoo keep saying they're willing to negotiate and sell the company on the one hand, while at the same time they're completely sabotaging the process without telling anyone.

(Photo by AP/Shiho Fukada)