The business stories that matter, by Fortune's Colin Barr
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February 1, 2008, 4:35 pm

Icahn resumes Motorola board push

Carl Icahn certainly doesn’t give up easy. The activist investor said Friday he’ll seek four board seats at struggling handset maker Motorola (MOT). The announcement comes a day after Motorola said it would consider Icahn’s suggestion to split off the company’s mobile devices business, which is losing money by the bucketful even as rivals such as Nokia (NOK) mint big sales gains.

“I believe that our slate of new candidates is necessary in order to help insure that the board moves aggressively to confront the many challenges Motorola faces in a highly competitive marketplace,” said Icahn, who owns 5% of Motorola. His nominees include former Viacom (VIA) chief Frank Biondi, brokerage exec Bill Hambrecht, MIT professor Lionel Kimerling and Icahn Enterprises (IEP) CEO Keith Meister. Icahn lost a bid to gain Motorola board seats last year after a marathon name-calling battle with then-CEO Ed Zander. Since then, though, Zander has stepped down in favor of Greg Brown - meaning that it’s just possible Motorola isn’t merely dodging and weaving when it says it is “currently reviewing the notice.”

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Colin Barr covers business and finance for Fortune.com. Previously he was an editor at TheStreet.com and author of the weekly Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street column, and an editor at Dow Jones Newswires.
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