Motorola Inc. (NYSE: MOT) CEO Ed Zander just can't get a break. Only months after activist investor Carl Icahn lost his bid to become perched on Motorola's board of directors and start his inside campaign to remove Zander, activist investor Eric Jackson summoned 20 fellow Motorola shareholders using Internet tools like blogs and online videos to commit their collective 47,000-share-strong voice in an effort to can Zander and four of 10 active Motorola board members.
Is the age of the billionaire activist investor over? Not quite. But smaller investors are using real-time communication tools via the Internet to build a solid and significant following in their quest to push for change at companies where share prices have remained stagnant or gone down. Motorola is one such company, and one that is being beat up by competitors Nokia (NYSE: NOK), Samsung and LG right now. It needs a cellphone hit like the RAZR to ignite sales and excite customers again, but its product lineup and roadmap looks quite staid next to the competition, save for the RAZR 2.
Jackson is no novice at this game, as he took six months to wage a replacement campaign against former Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel, and ended with 100 YHOO shareholders holding a collective two million shares. Jackson claims that the shareholders he reaches out to in these grassroots campaigns are legit owners with no material misrepresentation. Not bad for the small investor, eh?
Is the age of the billionaire activist investor over? Not quite. But smaller investors are using real-time communication tools via the Internet to build a solid and significant following in their quest to push for change at companies where share prices have remained stagnant or gone down. Motorola is one such company, and one that is being beat up by competitors Nokia (NYSE: NOK), Samsung and LG right now. It needs a cellphone hit like the RAZR to ignite sales and excite customers again, but its product lineup and roadmap looks quite staid next to the competition, save for the RAZR 2.
Jackson is no novice at this game, as he took six months to wage a replacement campaign against former Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel, and ended with 100 YHOO shareholders holding a collective two million shares. Jackson claims that the shareholders he reaches out to in these grassroots campaigns are legit owners with no material misrepresentation. Not bad for the small investor, eh?
