DALLAS, May 12 (UPI) -- The board of Blockbuster Inc., has been shaken up with the defeat of Chairman and Chief Executive John Antioco and election of dissident financier Carl Icahn.
At the annual meeting in Dallas Wednesday, Antioco was one of three sitting directors who lost their bids for re-election.
However, Antioco is expected to be reappointed to the board as chairman -- boosting its size to eight members -- and kept on as CEO, in part because he could be entitled to a $54 million severance, the Wall Street Journal said Thursday.
"We don't want him to have the right" to take the payment, said Icahn, who has complained about Antioco's 2004 compensation of $7 million in cash, $26.8 million in restricted stock as well as stock options that could be worth even more.
Icahn has become a billionaire buying up big stakes in companies and forcing changes to drive up share prices. In the 1980s, he made hundreds of millions of dollars buying up stocks of companies like Texaco Inc. and in the 1990s, he took on RJR Nabisco, scoring big profits once again.
