Icahn goes ahead with "distracting" proxy fight : US Business

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Activist investor Carl Icahn said on Wednesday that he was forging ahead with his proxy battle with Motorola Inc even after the mobile phone maker gave into his demands to split up the company.

Icahn, Motorola's second-biggest shareholder, tried again to persuade Motorola to put fund manager Keith Meister on the board to avoid the proxy battle, "a distraction that Motorola at this junction can ill afford" in a letter to the board.

He said the company had proposed two other nominees in exchange for Icahn dropping his efforts to get a slate of four shareholders onto the board.

But the billionaire investor said he was not interested unless Meister, who manages Icahn's $8 billion fund, was made a director. Icahn, who owns more than 6 percent of Motorola, said he told Motorola he would gladly accept the offer of two seats if the board would also accept Meister.

He said Motorola's plan to break up the company, which is losing cell phone market share, was "long overdue" but questioned why the break up would not happen until 2009.

Last year Icahn failed to win a seat on Motorola's board.

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