Ignore Icahn's Hoopla

Carl Icahn and his fights with management sure do make for entertaining news coverage, but investors shouldn't spend too much time analyzing how the antics are going to affect the share price.

In case you missed it, Icahn has been in a battle with Biogen Idec's (NASDAQ:BIIB) management, waging his second proxy fight in as many years and even calling for the company to split in two. Yesterday's antics included Biogen Idec keeping the polls open as long as possible to try and persuade investors to cast their vote in favor of management, and Icahn reportedly trying to get a Delaware court to end the voting. That's the kind of stuff the talking heads on TV love.

Things came to a close with Icahn claiming to have won two seats on the board and Biogen Idec saying that it's too early to say who's won the seats. The reality of the situation is that it doesn't really matter how many seats he won. Even if all four of his nominees won, that's not going to be enough to make many changes when the rest of the members on the 13-member board were nominated by the company. Icahn is in the same situation that he's in with Amylin Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:AMLN); he won't have the power -- at least not until he wins a few more proxy fights -- that he had at ImClone Systems to get Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE:BMY) and Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) into a bidding war.

That isn't to say that Icahn can't get anything done. As a large shareholder he was able to encourage the sale of MedImmune to AstraZeneca (NYSE:AZN), and he's been very vocal with his other investments in companies such as Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO) and Motorola (NYSE:MOT). But he doesn't need board seats to publically call the chairman an "imperial" and compare his management to that of dictators.

There's nothing wrong with getting your kicks from watching dramas on CNBC instead of SOAPnet, just don't expect the results of the vote to affect Biogen Idec's long-term outcome.

More Foolishness:

• One outrageously cheap stock.
• How to beat great hedge funds.
• Don't repeat this wealth-killing mistake.