In August of 2005, Carl C. Icahn announced to the press that he wanted Time Warner to spinoff (or more accurately to sell) its cable unit and then to repurchase $20 billion of its stock. The Icahn group owned less than 3 percent of Time Warner's outstanding stock (about 122,000,000 shares)....

There is need for changed rules protecting shareholders from arbitrary decisions that require that they sell when they would rather hold in a MBO (managerial buyout). A conflict of interests occurs when a private equity firm and the top management of a firm decide that the firm's stock equity...