Carl Icahn, the billionaire investor who has announced the buying of 50 million Yahoo shares, made public his plans of trying to change the Yahoo board of directors. The deadline of the nominations for the following elections is due Thursday. It seems that one of the people the billionaire is trying to sack is no other that the search engine giant’s CEO, Jerry Yang.

The move comes as a response to Yahoo’s board of directors’ decision to decline a takeover offer made by Microsoft valued at about $47.5 billion dollars. Microsoft’s initial bid of $31 a share was raised to $33, but Yahoo’s board, led by Mr. Yang wanted no less than $37. Under these conditions, Microsoft closed the negotiations and declared that it has no further interest in acquiring the company.

 Mr. Icahn is hoping that replacing Yahoo’s present management with people that are more open to reopening negotiations with Microsoft might lure the software company back to the negotiations table. The investor hopes to make a profit thanks to the fact that a possible takeover by Microsoft will increase the value of Yahoo’s shares.

Microsoft has shown increased interest in the search engine and online advertised market in the last few years. The market is supposed to double its value by 2010 thus reaching $80 billion. Google now has about two thirds of it, while Yahoo, the next biggest player owns about 21.3 percent, more than twice the value Microsoft has.

The billionaire that tries to push the companies back to negotiating has a history of changing the strategies of the companies he invests in so that he makes a profit. While in March he persuaded Motorola to split into two companies, early this year he orchestrated BAE Systems’ takeover by Oracle.