Barron's: Yahoo Nemesis Jackson Turns Attention To Motorola; Wants Zander Out Now

From Barron's Tech Trader Daily by Eric Savitz:

Eric Jackson, a blogger who lead a well-publicized grass roots shareholder campaign asking for change at Yahoo (YHOO), has a new target: Motorola (MOT).

Jackson has proposed a five-step “Plan B” to fix the struggling cell phone maker:

1. Replace Ed Zander as chairman and CEO “immediately.” He contends “Motorola shareholders would benefit from new leadership at the top.”

2. Replace Judy Lewent, Nicolas Negroponte, Samuel Scott III, and Dr. John White on the Motorola Board of Directors. He thinks they have all stuck around too long. “How ‘independent’ can you be when you’ve served on a board for over a decade?…We thank Ms. Lewent, Mr. Negroponte, Dr. White, and Mr. Scott for their service, but respectfully and strongly suggest that the company would be better served by new independent directors with strong business and communications experience.”

3. Appoint Edward Lampert to the Motorola board and others with deep communications experience. The billionaire investor has disclosed holding an $800 million stake in the company. “We note that 10 out of 11 of the current Motorola directors own less than 50,000 shares, with 4 directors owning less than 5,000 shares (and we suspect that most of these holdings came through stock grants or through stock options received, rather than digging into their own pockets to purchase stock). In our opinion, that is simply not enough ’skin in the game’ for a corporate director of a major global company.”

4. Outline the long-term vision and strategy for Motorola. “The simple truth is that customers do not like the current line-up of phones and there needs to be a better strategy for more compelling phones that will raise revenue,” he writes.

5. Appoint a permanent head of the Mobile Devices Business. He notes that “former head of the Mobile division, Ron Garriques, left in February to join Dell and, almost 6 months later, no successor has been named.”

I don’t know if Jackson’s campaign for change at Motorola will pick up traction, but he does make a compelling case.

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