Now that Carl Icahn has his seat on the Yahoo board, he'll presumably be too busy correcting the company's corporate governance abuses to blog properly at the Icahn Report (and by "blog properly," we mean "complain about the mainstream media"). So he's hired hedge fund reporter Dane Hamilton from Thomson Reuters to help out. If Google CEO Eric Schmidt is so worried about the fate of investigative journalism, maybe he should take a page from Icahn and adopt the de Medici model — commission work as a latter-day patrono. (Photo by AP/Shiho Fukada)

• Dan Och's Och-Ziff reported a net loss during the second quarter; the stock has been cut in half since its IPO last year. [Reuters, NYP]

Today was supposed to be the day of the big proxy fight. Instead, megamogul Carl Icahn has announced he won't be there, because he realized last week that "it was impossible to gain enough support from the large institutions to win a majority of the Yahoo! directorships." Wake us when it's over?

If Martha Stewart, Sam Waksal and Peter Bacanovic had just waited a little bit, they could have avoided that whole mess that landed them both in prison! This week, the biotech company that Waksal founded, ImClone Systems, received a $4.5 billion buyout offer from Bristol-Myers Squibb. Today the Times points out that the deal—$60 a share—is roughly the same price at which Martha and Sam illegally sold their shares in 2001. And ironically the drug that is responsible for ImClone's value is the same experimental medicine that prompted Martha & Co. to rush to unload their shares a few years ago. Of course, Martha's bounced back nicely since then. The same can't be said for Sam, who is behind bars. He'll be home soon enough, though. Officially Waksal's release date isn't until February 9, 2009, but he's expected to be released early and home in time for the last couple of weeks of summer. [NYT]

• The U.S. unemployment rate jumped to a four-year high of 5.7% during the month of July. [WSJ]

Now that corporate raider Carl Icahn has been mollified with a seat on Yahoo's board, he's all about keeping a low profile. On his blog, the Icahn report, he says he will not be appearing the Yahoo shareholder meeting: "The proxy fight is over and it will not do shareholders or Yahoo any good to have the annual meeting turn into a media event for no purpose." Icahn then proceeds to complain about evil institutional investors and how because of them he's stuck with a minority position, so now he's hoping for a "beautiful friendship" and "look(s) forward to working harmoniously with the new board of Yahoo." While CEO Jerry Yang and chairman Roy Bostock must be happy about Icahn's attitude upgrade, I already miss the cranky curmedgeon version. (Photo by Getty/Michael Nagle)

• Bristol-Myers Squibb is offering $4.5 billion for ImClone Systems, the drug maker controlled by Carl Icahn. [Dealbook]

Hypergenteel media investor Alan Patricof has graced portfolio company Huffington Post with an op-ed. He is archly polite in his open letter to new Yahoo board member Carl Icahn. But his message is as subtle as a hammer to the head: Icahn is in deep trouble. Hamstrung by Sarbanes-Oxley regulations and fiduciary duties to shareholders, the feisty corporate raider will have to behave impeccably, lest shareholders or regulators sue him. Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang laid a trap, and Icahn walked right in. Of course, Yang shouldn't laugh too hard — he's now trapped in a boardroom with Icahn. (Photo by Getty Images

Last week, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang was calling corporate raider Carl Icahn an inconsistent numbskull. This week, he's announcing that Icahn will join the board, and hailing his "fresh perspective." Jerry Yang deserves a pat on the back for coming to terms with the hostile investor; an ongoing fight would destroy the company he professed to love. But does he have to shred whatever is left of his credibility in the process? Here's a reminder of what Yahoo wrote about Icahn on its proxyfacts.yahoo.com website, linked to from the Yahoo homepage, until Yang abruptly changed his tune. Perhaps Yang and Icahn can have a nice chat about it before they move on to an acquisition of GitHub.

In an entirely punctuated memo posted to Yahoo's corporate blog and the SEC, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang — or his ghostwriters — declared that yesterday's agreement to give corporate raider Carl Icahn three board seats and avert a proxy fight allows Yahoo "to get back to the business at hand." But while Yahoo will soon enough be able to focus on doing what it does best — losing market share to Google and talent to startups — Yang and the board still have one more task at hand: filling out its expanded board with Icahn-approved nominees. Bet that one of the names will be fired AOL chairman and CEO Jon Miller. Though not included on Icahn's original slate of alternative directors, Yang mentioned Miller by name in his memo as a potential new board member.

With the Icahn business settled, Jerry Yang can move on to more important questions: For example, is he going to the Beijing Olympics? A week ago, he hadn't quite made up his mind.The dithering was utterly characteristic for the perennially indecisive Yahoo cofounder. But you'd think he could commit to a no-brainer like attending the Games. Yang is a Taiwanese native, and no fan of the Communist regime — China's jailing of a blogger, aided by Yahoo China's handover of email records, led to a humiliating session where he was called to the carpet in front of Congress. But the Beijing Olympics is a seminal event in the rise of Asia, where Yahoo has significant investments — one of the few areas where it has an edge on Google.

There will be no proxy fight at Yahoo's annual shareholder meeting this August 1. Today, Yahoo and corporate raider Carl Icahn agreed to end the fight by awarding Icahn three seats on an expanded, 11-member board. Icahn, who owns 5 percent of Yahoo, told the Wall Street Journal he still wants Yahoo to sell — either the whole company or just its search business at the right price — but that "I share the view that Yahoo's valuable collection of assets positions it well to continue expanding its online leadership and enhancing returns to stockholders."

• Yahoo and Carl Icahn have reached a settlement: Icahn and two of his nominees will join the board of the company. [AP]

Legg Mason portfolio manager saved Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang's job this morning, and far be it from the always-exclamatory Yang to hide his relief. Yang recorded a companywide video address, and reading a transcript filed with the SEC, we can't help but wonder if Yahoo's lawyers missed a few exclamation marks. "Hi guys," the transcript begins — but we're betting it sounded more like "Hi guys!!!!11!!!!"

If corporate raider Carl Icahn ever had any hope of convincing major Yahoo shareholders like Legg Mason's Bill Miller to back his alternative slate against the Yahoo board in a proxy fight, he needed a plan B in case a sale to Microsoft didn't work out. As Kara Swisher puts it, he needed "a solid management team and a cogent plan." For two reasons: One, because without an alternative to a merger with Microsoft, Microsoft would own all the chips in any merger negotiations. Two, by not naming a replacement Yahoo management team, Icahn left major shareholders with the impression that he himself would control the company after winning a proxy fight. Shareholders are unhappy with Yang & Co., but they tell Swisher that "taking such a major step as dumping them and leaving the company in Icahn’s hands — even for a short time he will be there — is decidedly more risky." So if it was so important that he do so, why didn't Icahn ever name a nominee for Yang's job? Because he was caught in a classic Catch-22.

Yahoo has posted a big purple link to its anti-Carl Icahn website on the front door at Yahoo.com, with a rotating set of teasers including an Icahn quote, "It's hard to understand these technology companies." Wow, they're just like bloggers who post the letters lawyers send them! But seriously, by using its reach to deliver its own insidery message to shareholders, Yahoo is finally acting like a mainstream media company. Icahn may find tech companies hard to understand, but he's probably figured this out today: He's fighting in public with an opponent whose daily audience dwarfs CNN and the Wall Street Journal. Here's a closeup:

Legg Mason portfolio manager Bill Miller controls 4.4 percent of all Yahoo shares and he's formally declared his plans to vote them for CEO Jerry Yang and the current Yahoo board. In a statement, Legg Mason says it doesn't buy corporate raider Carl Icahn's claim that Microsoft would only offer to buy the company again if it could negotiate with a new board.

Voicemail at the East Hampton home of Carl and Gail Icahn.

In a memo filed with the SEC, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock made what we can only hope will be their final case to Yahoo shareholders as to why they should vote against Carl Icahn's alternative board at the company's August 1 annual meeting. (While Yang also signed the memo, you can tell Bostock's actually the one who wrote it, because it uses capital letters.) Their key points:

"PLEASE STOP PEEING IN THE SINK
THANK YOU!
FACILITIES"