Micron Technology (MU) suffered the sudden death of its CEO, Steve Appleton, on Friday in a small plane accident in Boise, Idaho. Beyond the obvious human tragedy, this event is a sad but important reminder about the need for effective CEO succession planning.

It's hardly the first time a large company has suffered the abrupt death of a CEO:

• Biochemical distributor and manufacturer Sigma-Aldrich (SIAL) lost CEO Jai Nagarkatti to a heart attack in 2010.
• Fast-food cult favorite In-N-Out Burger faced a crisis after President Richard Snyder and Executive Vice President Philip West were killed in a chartered jet crash in 1993.
• Fast-food giant McDonald's (MCD) saw lightning strike twice in the past decade: CEO Jim Cantalupo was felled by a fatal heart attack in 2004, and his successor Charlie Bell died of cancer less than a year later.

Micron named an in-house executive as its new CEO within days, as did Sigma-Aldrich, McDonalds and In-N-Out. But in some of these cases those decisions weren't born out of a pre-established CEO succession plan. In fact, in corporate America, the lack of a plan for such situations is more common than not.

Numbers to Make an Investor's Mind Numb

According to a 2010 survey of North American CEOs and board members, only 54% are grooming an executive as a CEO successor. And 39% of survey respondents had no internal CEO candidate in mind, according to the survey by Stanford University's Rock Center for Corporate Governance and Heidrick & Struggles.

The survey also found that only 50% of survey respondents said their boards had developed a written document detailing the required skills for the next CEO and that, on average, corporate boards only spent two hours a year discussing CEO succession planning. A board's nominating and governance committee, which are usually charged with finding a new CEO, spend on average only four hours, the survey found.

And while 71% of internal candidates know they are part of a formal talent development pool, half of them don't receive regular annual or semiannual talks to let them know where they stand or whether they're in the running for the CEO slot, according to the survey. As a result, some of those in the company's talent pool may defect to another employer.

"I don't think things have changed much since we've done that report," says David Larcker, a professor with Stanford's Graduate School of Business who specializes in corporate governance and is co-author of the report. "It's one thing to say you have a document, but is it carefully crafted with all the right steps and is it operational?"

Larcker says that while most companies can name an interim CEO immediately, a well-crafted plan will allow a company to name a permanent replacement within four to six weeks.

How Fast Is Fast?

In Micron's case, it immediately named then-President and Chief Operating Officer Mark Durcan as its interim CEO. Durcan clearly was not part of a Micron CEO succession plan, given that just weeks earlier, the company had announced that he planned to retire in August. Micron has since removed the "interim" from Durcan's title and says he no longer plans to retire in August.

In Sigma-Aldrich's case, it simultaneously announced the sudden death of Nagarkatti and the appointment of Chief Financial Officer Rakesh Sachdev as his replacement. McDonald's took a similar tack, pulling a new CEO from its deep executive bench, noted Patrick McGurn, executive director of proxy advisory service Institutional Shareholder Services. He pointed to McDonald's rapid appointment of a new CEO, not once but twice, when tragedy struck.

In a CNN Money interview with McDonald's director Andrew McKenna, the director noted McDonald's faced three choices: make no CEO appointment, name an interim CEO, or promote the heir apparent prematurely.

The board found the first two options unacceptable, characterizing the title of interim CEO as "like buying something on trial," noted the CNN Money report. And while Bell was slated to undergo several more years of CEO grooming, a decision was made to hit the go button early. That strategy was followed again when Bell died of cancer less than a year after taking the helm, leaving the fast-food chain to name Jim Skinner, its former vice chairman and president of McDonald's Restaurant Group, as CEO in 2005.

What'll It Take for Change?

"It'll take pressure from ISS, companies stumbling in their CEO selection, bad press and more votes against a company board's nominating committee to lead to change," Larcker says.

ISS' McGurn notes the irony of how insurance companies demand that sports figures and entertainers sign clauses in their contracts to refrain from high-risk activities, such as skydiving and the like, but that the same demands have not been made of CEOs.

Appleton was known to engage in high-risk sports such as stunt flying, and he was injured in 2004 when his stunt plane crashed. He also raced cars in the desert, including in 2006 when he took a Baja Challenge Class win in the SCORE Tecate Baja 1000.

"For the board of directors, it's a tough issue," McGurn says. "You have so much invested in this CEO and yet it's hard to ask that they don't do anything that puts them a risk."

Motley Fool contributor Dawn Kawamoto does not own stocks in any of the stocks listed. Motley Fool newsletter services have recommended buying shares of McDonald's.

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A 30-second ad spot in this year's Super Bowl cost an average of $3.5 million. That's an 84% increase from 10 years ago and the highest amount advertisers have ever had to pay. While that is quite the price hike, it is in line with the growth in TV audience, which has just about doubled over the past decade. But despite spending so much to reach such a massive audience at once, the results are rarely impressive.

Between 2002 and 2011, companies spent $2.5 billion on Super Bowl advertising, based on 24/7 Wall St.'s estimate. The top 10 spenders were responsible for more than one-third of that. And one company, Budweiser maker Anheuser-Busch, spent almost $250 million over the past 10 years on Super Bowl ads, a whopping one-tenth of the total.

24/7 Wall St. ranked total spending for all of the companies that advertised during the Super Bowl in the past decade. An analysis of the top spenders reflects how bad this investment can be. While some, such as Hyundai and Toyota have improved market share over that time, most have not. Based on total ad spending, product failures, change in market share, share price and sales, we identified the eight brands that wasted the most on the Super Bowl, including mega brands such as Coke, Budweiser, GM and Ford.

The top spenders fall into four major categories: automotive, film, food, including snacks and fast food, and beverages. Four of the top 10 Super Bowl advertisers are auto companies. Another four are food and beverage manufacturers. Three movie studios are in the top 25.

Because Super Bowl ads are dominated by a small number of industries, many companies in those industries are forced to advertise just to keep up. Most of the top 10 spenders are perennial also-rans. Yum! Brands, owner of KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, spent $67 million over the past 10 years. Meanwhile, McDonald's, the indisputable market leader, spent less than half that amount and is not a top 10 spender. Similarly, E*Trade, well-known for the talking baby campaign, spent more than any other online brokerage firm, yet remains fourth in the industry.

24/7 Wall St. tabulated all of the commercials from the past 10 Super Bowls, as archived by Adland, the "world's largest archive of Super Bowl commercials." Using that data, 24/7 calculated the number of commercials each company bought, as well as their length, including any available pregame, postgame and prime advertising commercials. To estimate the total amount each company spent on Super Bowl advertising in the past decade, we used the average costs of a 30-second commercial spot each year and the total number of minutes of advertising time recorded by Adland.

These are the eight brands that wasted the most on the Super Bowl.

8. E*Trade
Total ad spending (2002-2011): $35.9 million
Super Bowls advertised in over past 10 years: 6
Average ads per Super Bowl: 2.5
Change in share price (2002-current): -91.1%
Change in market share: n/a

E*Trade (ETFC) has run Super Bowl ads in the past five years, as well as in 2002, attempting to make headway against larger online trading competitors Fidelity Investments, Charles Schwab and TD Ameritrade. With an average of 2.5 ads per game, E*Trade has run 6.75 minutes of Super Bowl ads over the past 10 years. Although the company's ad campaigns have varied, its most popular campaign features the E*Trade talking baby, which debuted during Super Bowl XLII in 2008. Although that ad resulted in a record-breaking number of new accounts for the company, E*Trade's overall share price has decreased 91.1% since February 2002.

7. Ford
Total ad spending (2002-2011): $36.3 million
Super Bowls advertised in over past 10 years: 5
Average ads per Super Bowl: 2.2
Change in share price (2002-current): -17.1%
Change in market share: 20.2% (2002), 16.8% (2011)

Despite the fact that Ford (F) is one of the most iconic American brands, it has not run an ad during the Super Bowl since 2008. In that year, the company only ran one 30-second commercial. Competitors GM and Hyundai ran several ads that year and have each run at least five since then. When it was still running commercials, Ford advertised specific vehicles, including the Focus, Escape and the F-150. The 2006 commercial for the Escape Hybrid featured Kermit the Frog, who reported that it was actually "easy being green." While the advertisement was memorable, it also marked the year before the Escape Hybrid's sales peaked.

6. Warner Bros.
Total ad spending (2002-2011): $48.6 million
Super Bowls advertised in over past 10 years: 4
Average ads per Super Bowl: 4.75
Change in share price (2002-current): -51.6%
Change in market share: 11.7% (2002), 17.9% (2011)

Warner Bros. (TWX) has spent an enormous amount of money over the years advertising major motion pictures during the Super Bowl. Some, such as The Matrix Reloaded, Troy, and Batman Begins, became highly successful blockbusters. Showing trailers during the Super Bowl is only growing more popular for studios: Last year, a record 14 trailers were shown. The market share for Warner Bros. films increased from 11.7% to 17.9% between 2002 and 2011, but many of the movies it advertised during Super Bowls were complete flops. Films like Poseidon and Constantine grossed far less in the U.S. than they cost to make. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines grossed $150 million domestically -- nearly $50 million less than its budget -- despite the fact that Warner bought more than two minutes in ads for the movie during the 2003 Super Bowl (and at $2.2 million for 30 seconds, they weren't cheap back then either).

5. Coca-Cola
Total ad spending (2002-2011): $61.0 million
Super Bowls advertised in over past 10 years: 5
Average ads per Super Bowl: 2.8
Change in share price (2002-current): +51.8%
Change in market share: 44.3% (2002), 42.0% (2010)

Even though Coca-Cola (KO) has only advertised for the past five years of the decade, it has spent more than almost every other advertiser. Since 2007, Coca-Cola has run several ads each year, including two 60-second commercials in 2011 that cost an estimated $12.4 million in ad time alone. Coke commercials during the Super Bowl are usually fantastic, and last year was no different. One ad featured a dragon drinking the beverage. In the other, two border guards representing opposing countries put aside their national differences to focus on their mutual love of the drink. Between 2000 and 2010, Coca-Cola Classic sales declined 22% in gallons sold.







4. Yum! Brands
Total ad spending (2002-2011): $67.8 million
Super Bowls advertised in over past 10 years: 9
Average ads per Super Bowl: 3
Change in share price (2002-current): +366%
Change in market share: 37% (2000), 28% (2011)

Yum! Brands (YUM) is one of the largest fast food companies in the world, operating chains including KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut. When the company spends on Super Bowl advertising, it usually avoids pushing its most popular brand, KFC. Only five of the company's 27 Super Bowl commercials in the past decade advertised Colonel Sanders' restaurant. Instead, Yum! focuses on its smaller brands, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, with 12 and 10 ads over that time, respectively. Yum! Brands' share price has increased 366% since 2002, due in large part to its international expansion. KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut sales combined are still leagues behind McDonald's.

3. General Motors
Total ad spending (2002-2011): $135.2 million
Super Bowls advertised in over last ten years: 8
Average ads per Super Bowl: 5.5
Change in share price (2002-current): filed chapter 11 in 2009
Change in market share: ~29% (2002), 19.6% (2011)

Four automakers were among the top 10 spenders, but none of the others spent anywhere close to what General Motors (GM) has. GM bought more than $135 million-worth of commercial time during the big games. Even though GM didn't advertise in 2009 or 2010, while it was going through bankruptcy and reemergence, it still spent more than Ford, Toyota and Hyundai combined. In 2005, the company ran 13 separate commercials -- tying it with Pepsi and Anheuser-Busch for the most in a single year. Last year, the carmaker ran five commercials, all of which were Chevy ads, including one produced in collaboration with DreamWorks for the then-upcoming Transformers sequel.

2. PepsiCo
Total ad spending (2002-2011): $209.7 million
Super Bowls advertised in over past 10 years: 10
Average ads per Super Bowl: 7.2
Change in share price (2002-current): +32.4%
Change in market share: 31.4% (2002) - 29.3% (2010)

Although it trails Coke in most ways, PepsiCo (PEP) is the No. 1 soft drink company when it comes to Super Bowl advertising. Over the past decade, the company has spent over $200 million on advertising its products during the games, airing an average of 7.2 ads per year. Of course, it advertises much more than just Pepsi Cola: Its Super Bowl commercials push Gatorade, Sierra Mist, SoBe, Tostitos, Doritos and more. In 2010, PepsiCo spent more than $358 million on television advertising compared to Coca-Cola's $277 million. PepsiCo also aired 72 Super Bowl ads over the past 10 years compared to Coke's 14. Despite all this, Coca-Cola remains the king of carbonated beverages. And the volume of regular Pepsi sold dropped 32% between 2001 and 2010.

1. Anheuser-Busch
Total ad spending (2002-2011): $246.2 million
Super Bowls advertised in over last ten years: 10
Average ads per Super Bowl: 8.7
Change in share price (2002-current): N/A (was purchased by InBev in 2008)
Change in market share: 52% (2002), 48.3% (2011)

Since 2002, Anheuser-Busch, the maker of Budweiser beer, bought close to a quarter of a billion dollars in Super Bowl advertising -- one-tenth of the total for all advertisers. The American beverage company was purchased in 2008 by Belgian InBev, forming one massive beverage company -- Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD). That year, the company purchased 13 separate Super Bowl ads for nearly $40 million -- the second-most spent by any company on ads in single year. Budweiser's commercials have featured some of advertisings most iconic animals, including football-playing Clydesdales, jealous lizards, and more recently, partying dogs. Bud Light and Budweiser used to be the first- and second-most popular beers in the U.S. But despite its massive ad campaigns, the company lost the No. 2 spot to Coors Light in 2011.

-- Charles B. Stockdale, Michael B. Sauter and Ashley C. Allen

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Gallery: Facebook - A Timeline

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This should be a big month for J.C. Penney (JCP).

On Wednesday, the department store chain officially rolled out its "Fair and Square" pricing strategy. Instead of frequent sales and perpetual markdowns on aging inventory, J.C. Penney is introducing everyday low pricing. No one is sure if pricing confusion kept shoppers away from the retailer, but reliably low price tags on fashionable duds sounds like a winning strategy on paper.

If it sounds a lot like Target's (TGT) "cheap chic" way of thinking, perhaps it's because new CEO Ron Johnson spent the 1990s as an executive at the country's second-largest discounter.

But Johnson's real claim to fame is what he did on this side of the millennium.

Comparing Apples to Orange Stockings

Johnson arrived at Apple (AAPL) in time to pioneer the tech giant's ridiculously successful foray into retail. The Apple store empire grew into a 300-unit behemoth, raking in $15 billion in annual revenue under his watch. He left Apple to head up J.C. Penney in November.

He's a great catch for J.C. Penney, but will it be enough to turn the chain's fortunes around? The market seems to think so. Shares have nearly doubled since bottoming out back in August. Most of those gains have come since Johnson's arrival.

It's only helped Johnson's cause when he claimed that the chain's makeover -- in both pricing and layout -- may save the debt-saddled company $900 million over the next two years. He also issued a robust fiscal outlook, but even he can't know if all of his changes will work out.

For starters, this isn't Apple. This isn't the only place in the mall to buy a Macbook or get a "genius" to mend your ailing iPhone. (Better or cheaper clothing options are likely a few stores away.) There's a reason why Apple is any mall's top seller per square foot, and it has more to do with Apple's brand than how the bright stores are laid out.

Johnson can't just install the Green Bay Packers offense in the Cleveland Browns team and expect success. It doesn't work that way. Apparel retailing is a commodity.

There's also a big different between what cash-rich Apple can do and the flexibility available to J.C. Penney with its $3 billion in debt.

A Penney for Your Thoughts

The Apple-ization of J.C. Penney is also susceptible to jabs.

Folks have generally been bashing the sparse "jcp" logo that was officially introduced on Wednesday for its simplicity. And by next year the retailer's stores will be carved out into dozens of brand-specific areas with a "town square" center for services. This may very well work for Apple with only a handful of product categories, but it may be confusing for someone trying to find a particular brand among 80-100 brand areas in the "Main Street" that Johnson envisions.

If it flops, Johnson's toast. If it works, rivals will quickly embrace the new format. In other words, it's a lose-lose less scenario.

Even the every day low pricing mantra may prove to be confusing. J.C. Penney still plans unique month-long promotions anchored by a chunky 96-page catalog that will be mailed out. The "everyday" low prices deserve asterisks because extra markdowns may take place on the first and third Friday of the month to move stale merchandise. In the end, shoppers will still be navigating through a myriad of distinctive Every Day, Month-Long Value, and Best Price colored tags.

Simplicity shouldn't have to be this confusing.

Pin the Tail on the Retailer

Right now, the love affair is still strong between the meandering department store chain and the investing community.

Johnson hasn't failed.

Optimists are counting the incremental shoppers, without considering that current customers might take their plastic elsewhere. They're warming up to the low prices that have helped Target, TJX (TJX), and Kohl's (KSS) through these bargain-hungry years, but perhaps they're not aware that the mall rents where J.C. Penney's lives are higher than what the strip-mall anchors have to shell out.

And if J.C. Penney is truly offering lower prices, are we looking at lower margins or a lower quality of merchandise? Choose one.

The stock's heady run in recent months has discounted the perfect execution of Johnson's turnaround strategy. Where's the upside? J.C. Penney is trading for roughly 20 times this new fiscal year's target. Kohl's and Target fetch multiples of 10 and 12, respectively. Even Johnson's former home -- growth demon Apple -- is trading for about half of J.C. Penney's forward earnings multiple.

J.C. Penney's stock is too expensive for any investor that can appreciate "Every Day" low prices. The reinvention process is always harder than it seems.

Longtime Motley Fool contributor Rick Munarriz does not own shares in any of the stocks in this article. The Motley Fool owns shares of Apple. Motley Fool newsletter services have recommended buying shares of Apple. Motley Fool newsletter services have also recommended creating a bull call spread position in Apple.

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• Best Buy (BBY) had the genius star-studded pairing of rock legend Ozzy Osbourne with teen idol Justin Bieber in a spot for its then-new buyback protection program. The ad may have been clever, but the market was still left wondering why it would need to pay more for a product for the sake of the restrictive obsolescence insurance that the consumer electronics retailer was providing. The stock fell 0.7% on the Monday after the Super Bowl, and tumbled 4.6% over the course of the week. Things haven't gotten any better for Best Buy, now off 26% since last year's Super Bowl commercial.
• The E*TRADE Baby came back, this time with his tailor. The discount broker's ad showed how easy it was to get a novice investor up to speed in building an impressive portfolio. Sadly, the same thing can't be said of E*TRADE's stock itself over the long haul. The stock did pop 2.2% higher on the Monday after the ad aired -- and 4.2% on the week -- but it has gone on to shed more than half of its value.
• PepsiCo had several ads for both Pepsi MAX and Doritos. Those didn't seem to move the stock at all. The soda-and-salty-snacks giant saw its shares slip 0.2% on Super Bowl Monday, closing flat on the week. However, unlike Best Buy and E*TRADE, PepsiCo is actually trading higher these days -- up by 6%.
• And then there's salesforce.com (CRM), which spent a lot of money promoting Chatter during last year's Super Bowl. And today, how many people know that Chatter is a cloud-based company communications platform? The answer shows that Super Bowl ads may not even influence consumers, let alone the stock price.

For an even longer view of post-game stock performance we can rewind even further -- past last year's ads and into Super Bowl commercial highlights of yore.

Apple's (AAPL) 1984 ad -- the futuristic commercial directed by Ridley Scott -- made its national debut during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII in 1984. If you were fortunate enough to have bought Apple that year -- and held on through the company's rocky 1990s -- you'd be sitting on a 100-bagger today.

However, we can also look to all of the Super Bowl ads by cash-rich and profit-poor dot-coms ahead of the Internet bubble that popped. The doomed Pets.com had a Super Bowl ad in 2000. Yahoo! (YHOO) gave television's costliest stage a swing with its talking dolphin ad in 2002. There's a surprising end to that one, though: Yahoo! shares have actually more than doubled since that time on a split-adjusted basis.

But memorable ads will only get you so far. Anheuser-Busch (BUD) has had some of the game's most notable ads. (Everyone remembers the Bud-weis-er frogs, the "Whassup?" guys, and classy Clydesdale horse clips.) And, yes, the company has definitely been a quality investment over the years across several incarnations. Even so, earlier this month, Coors Light overtook Budweiser as the country's second-most-popular beer by volume. And while Anheuser-Busch can take heart in knowing that its Bud Light is still the top dog in beer consumption, it still must ask: Were all those frogs talking for naught?

So do Super Bowl ads ultimately influence a stock's price? No, if all you do is spend $3.5 billion for an ad this weekend. If the product or service you're promoting will move the needle for your company, well, that's something else entirely.

Longtime Motley Fool contributor Rick Munarriz does not own shares in any of the stocks in this article. The Motley Fool owns shares of Apple, Coca-Cola, Yahoo!, PepsiCo, and Best Buy. Motley Fool newsletter services have recommended buying shares of salesforce.com, Coca-Cola, Yahoo!, PepsiCo, and Apple. Motley Fool newsletter services have also recommended writing covered calls in Best Buy, creating a bull call spread position in Apple, creating a diagonal call position in PepsiCo, and shorting salesforce.com.

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Tea leaves, rabbit feet and Ouija boards aren't the typical tools of the investing trade. Instead, most responsible investors rely on research, analysis, strategy, and conviction to guide them. Still, that hasn't stopped some folks from looking for an easier, or more exciting, approach.

Two professors at Indiana University, for example, believe that the direction the Dow Jones Industrial Average will take can be determined via the collective mood of participants on Twitter. Others market watchers point to supposed correlations between the stock market and the length of skirts, the nationality of the model on the cover of Sports Illustrated's swimsuit edition, or whether it snows in Boston on Christmas. (For those keeping score: Short skirts, a white Christmas, and an American model all suggest the market will rise.)

Feng Shui Predicts...

And now, out of Hong Kong comes another prediction via a leading Asian brokerage, CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets. Just before China's Lunar New Year, it released its 18th annual "feng shui index," and its predictions augur well for Hong Kong's Hang Seng stock market index.

Feng shui is the ancient Chinese practice of improving one's fortune by arranging items in auspicious ways and by choosing promising dates for events. It has its skeptics and its ardent supporters, but when applied to the stock market this year, it's making many believers smile.

That's because this is the year of the black water dragon, and though it's associated with volatility, its appearance predicts a slow start in the first half of the year followed by a strong finish.

The CLSA report gets specific, too, predicting particular success for certain elements, such as water and earth. One specific business singled out for a good year is cement, which should make investors in Cemex (CX) happy. The stock has been beaten down in large part due to the global construction slowdown, but when building eventually picks up, demand for cement will grow.

Hold Your Horses... er, Dragons...

If you're rushing to the end of this article so that you can immediately switch to your broker's website to buy stock in American or Chinese stocks, hold on. The folks at the CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets stress that they offer the feng shui index "with our tongues firmly in our cheeks" -- in other words, it's not meant to be investment advice.

Even without that disclaimer, you'd do well to take these predictions and any others based on such unconventional indicators with a grain of salt. Remember: Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Those who make a lot of predictions are likely to be right now and then, and it won't always be clear whether any given hit is due to their brilliance or just random luck. And even if you only follow the guidance or example of proven winners, that might still backfire on you: The world's best investors have all made their share of regrettable moves.

What to Do

Instead, when it comes to stock-market investing, it's probably best to stick with tried-and-true routes to success, such as being a responsible investor. Instead of looking for astrology or sports superstitions to influence you, rely instead on research, analysis, strategy and conviction.

Read widely and deeply about the companies and industries that interest you. Study them so that you have a good sense of their competitive advantages and potential. Find exceptionally promising companies and focus your money on your best ideas. Diversify, so that you don't have all your eggs in one or a few baskets. Then be patient, stick to your convictions, and be prepared for occasional losses.

Longtime Motley Fool contributor Selena Maranjian owns shares of Cemex, but she holds no other position in any company mentioned. Click here to see her holdings and a short bio.

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"If you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all," is a mantra that's alive and well on Wall Street. Analysts prefer to cover stocks where their sentiment is bullish. Google (GOOG), for example, is a market darling. A full 34 of the 38 major firms with published analysis on the search giant give it a "buy" or "strong buy" rating. This series looks at the few stocks where Wall Street is generally bearish on a company's prospects

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The two-headed beast at the helm of Research In Motion (RIMM) has been vanquished.

The BlackBerry maker's maligned co-CEOS Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis are stepping down. CEO Thorsten Heins is taking the reins. RIM's stock fell sharply on the news, but it's not as if the market is lamenting the loss of Balsillie and Lazaridis.

The smartphone pioneer's co-CEOs were at the top of many "Worst CEOs of 2011" lists thanks to the company's struggles to keep pace with the booming popularity of wireless gadgetry powered by Apple's (AAPL) iOS and Google's (GOOG) Android.

But as far as changes at the top are concerned, the market simply wasn't impressed because Heins is an insider. He's been at the company for a few years. Mirroring the dual CEO structure, he was one of two co-COOs at RIM.

The stock shed more than 8% of its value on Monday because investors felt that Heins is too close to the problem to find a solution. Those hoping for a radical makeover at RIM were naturally let down, especially after Heins' first comments as the Canadian company's new chieftain were basically to downplay the its shortcomings and argue that he's not inheriting a turnaround situation.

The Basket's Open But the Ball RIMs out

Bulls may argue that Heins is right. How can RIM be broken when it closed out its most recent quarter with a record 75 million BlackBerry owners? Sure, the company is losing gobs of market share to Android and iPhones, but the pie is clearly growing.

The one encouraging thing that Heins did this week is to say that his first move will be to bring in fresh minds on the marketing end. RIM isn't dead or dying, and he wants that message to get out there more effectively than it is now.

However, life isn't going to get any easier for RIM. The same corporate IT decision makers who always swore by BlackBerry as a secure and efficient platform for their companies have been talked into embracing the two consumer operating systems of choice. Nokia (NOK) is also in the process of releasing its first wave of phones powered by Windows Phone -- and IT departments have longer working relationships with Microsoft (MSFT) than they do with RIM.

This is a turnaround attempt, whether Heins concedes the point publicly or not.

Kicking the 'Co-' Habit

Because RIM has been a huge disappointment for investors over the past year, some may question whether having two CEOs got in the way of the company making the changes necessary to make it relevant again. Few similar dual leadership structures have been successful.

Sometimes it's hard to take the setup seriously. When IMAX (IMAX) had two CEOs, they would literally both be given attribution to the same quotes in corporate press releases. Even if we all know that CEO quotes in press releases are typically the handiwork of crafty corporate communication departments (which then get CEOs to approve the spin-doctored quotes), it just felt silly to read a quote attributed to two executives as if they were saying it in unison.

IMAX held up reasonably well during its dual CEO tenure, but RIM is cautionary tale for companies that are so unsure about who they want at the helm or so fear losing or offending a senior executive that they end up splitting the CEO position.

Having a single CEO is the way to go. It encourages accountability. It sends a clear message. A CEO can wear many hats, but two CEOs should never have to share one.

Longtime Motley Fool contributor Rick Munarriz does not own shares in any stocks in this article. The Motley Fool owns shares of Google, Apple, and Microsoft. Motley Fool newsletter services have recommended buying shares of Microsoft, Apple, Google, and IMAX. Motley Fool newsletter services have recommended creating a bull call spread positions in Apple and Microsoft.

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Some bears never hibernate -- we're talking about the worrywarts out there, betting against companies by initiating short positions.

In a nutshell, a short is an investment that appreciates when a stock heads lower. Bears will short a stock by selling shares borrowed from their broker. They then cover their positions by buying them back, ideally at lower prices so they can make some money. Selling first and buying later -- reversing the traditional order -- may be frowned upon by some investors, but it's a perfectly legal practice.

It's also very popular in volatile times.

Short People

Unfortunately for shorts, betting against a company can backfire on them. If the stock ticks higher on good news or general market optimism, those betting against the stock may find themselves scrambling to cover their short positions before they lose even more money. When too many shorts are rushing for the exits, the act of purchasing the stock to close out their positions creates what we call a short squeeze.

Here's where something called the short interest ratio should be every worrywart's friend. The metric divides the number of shares sold short by the trading volume on a typical trading day. The larger the short interest ratio, the more likely that we'll see a short squeeze because of the spike in demand for buy orders.

5 Companies That Would Be Dangerous to Diss

Let's take a look at a few of the stocks with the highest short interest ratios as of the end of last month, making them dangerous to bet against unless a bear is absolutely sure about where the company's stock is heading.

o. Sealy (ZZ): Short interest ratio of 75 days (13 million shares short on 172,976 daily volume)

The story: The leading mattress maker has been tossing and turning at night. Sealy stunned the market by posting a sharp loss in its latest quarter when analysts were braced for a small profit. One analyst downgraded the stock on the "distressingly disappointing" showing.

What can go wrong for shorts: Despite the success of rivals making premium form-fitting and air-chambered mattresses, Sealy still has many popular brands in its portfolio. Analysts also see a return to slight profitability this fiscal year.

o. MannKind (MNKD): Short interest ratio of 39 days (27.1 million shares short on 692,640 daily volume)

The story: Diabetics were cheering on MannKind as the company was trying to push an inhaled insulin called Afrezza toward regulatory approval. No more insulin needles? Sweet! Well, not so sweet. The Food and Drug Administration failed to clear the treatment, leaving MannKind with mounting losses as it bleeds through its cash.

What can go wrong for shorts: MannKind already shed two-thirds of its value last year, so it's not as if bears are new to this story. There have also been several acquisitions in the pharmaceuticals industry lately, as larger drugmakers snap up promising biotechs. MannKind may seem to be an unlikely buyout candidate, but anything is possible.

o. Logitech (LOGI): Short interest ratio of 28 days (12 million shares short on 422,895 shares)

The story: Logitech is a major maker of third-party hardware accessories for computers. If you have an optical mouse or a detachable webcam that didn't come packaged with your original computer, you may very well own a Logitech device. Unfortunately, the success of smartphones and tablets that don't require third-party hardware accessories are eating into Logitech's performance.

What can go wrong for shorts: PC and laptop sales were sluggish last year, but this is far from a dead market. Logitech has also embraced the "good enough" computing trend by rolling out new accessories for tablets and mobile phones.

o. Tesla Motors (TSLA): Short interest ratio of 28 days (23.7 million shares short on 851,090 daily volume)

The story: The original Tesla Roadster turned heads, but didn't attract enough buyers, given its lofty sticker price. The plan to roll out more affordable Model S sedans -- starting at $50,000 -- later this year is encouraging, but now that we've seen Chevy Volt batteries catch on fire days after a collision, electric cars have an even steeper uphill climb.

What can go wrong for the shorts: Once the Model S hits the road at a price point that isn't much more than the Volt or other electrics and electric hybrids, its visibility may prove to be contagious. Tesla is nowhere near profitability at the moment, but a growing presence will help see it through, if not smoke out a major car manufacturer as an outright buyer.

o. GameStop (GME): Short interest ratio of 24 days (39.8 million shares short on 1.7 million daily volume)

The story: Video game sales have been languishing since 2009, and console makers updating their systems may not attract casual gamers who are killing time elsewhere. Every passing quarter over the past year has seen the small-box video game retailer hosing down its guidance for store-level sales. Digital delivery is another threat, rendering physical distributors obsolete.

What can go wrong for the shorts: GameStop has held up better than the industry itself. Strong customer loyalty and a wildly successful program where gamers trade in used games and gear for store credit have kept GameStop's profitability growing at a time when the niche is going the wrong way. The long-term outlook is gloomy for GameStop, but the stock appears cheap in the near term.

Longtime Motley Fool contributor Rick Munarriz does not own shares in any of the stocks in this article. The Motley Fool owns shares of Logitech International and GameStop. Motley Fool newsletter services have recommended buying shares of Tesla Motors and Logitech International, as well as writing covered calls in GameStop.

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By Joe Mont, TheStreet.com

Investing doesn't just have to be about increasing wealth. It can also be a means to preserve it.

Successful investors -- from speculative day traders to steadier 401(k) participants, for example -- will adjust their holdings to craft a portfolio capable of meeting or beating the rate of inflation. With the price of home heating oil on the rise, and likely to keep increasing due to global politics, now might be a good time for investors to place a bet on the price per barrel to hedge against the costs of staying warm this winter. As they say: "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the mild winter thus far in the Northeast, where there is the highest concentration of oil-heated homes, has mitigated some expected cost increases.

The typical household is projected to use about 650 gallons of heating oil this winter, a decrease of about 4% compared with last winter. The cost per gallon will increase, however, averaging about $3.82 a gallon -- up about 13%, according to EIA estimates issued last week. The average home heating bill will total about $2,500 this year, an increase of roughly 8.4%. The good news, thanks to warmer-than-expected weather, is that the EIA initially estimated a 10% jump last month.

Those projections could prove to be moving targets later in the season due to a variety of threats to the world's oil supply chain.

On Monday, the European Union voted to support U.S. calls for a ban on imports of Iranian oil as punitive persuasion to get that nation to back away from an effort to develop nuclear weapons. Iranian officials have threatened to blockade the Straits of Hormuz, the oceanic shipping route for most oil-producing countries in that region.

"If the Straits of Hormuz close, oil will rise above $200 per barrel," warns Chris Faulkner, CEO of Breitling Oil & Gas, an independent exploration and production company based in Irving, Texas. "It is the one bottleneck that allows Iran to choke the West's oil supply."

Seventeen million barrels of oil per day passed through the Straits last year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency -- approximately one-sixth of global oil production and nearly 20% of all the oil traded worldwide. Iran itself exports between 2.2 million to 2.5 million barrels a day.

Iran isn't the only hot spot that could lead to tightened supplies and higher prices. Political conflict in Nigeria threatens its output of 2.5 million barrels a day. Tensions between Sudan and the newly independent nation of South Sudan over oil-related transit fees could curtail the nearly 500,000 barrels per day that flows from that area.

Domestically, it remains to be seen whether there will be any price-related pushback to President Barack Obama's refusal to grant a permit for the politically charged Keystone XL pipeline expansion pitched as running from Canada through Montana and Oklahoma to refineries in Texas for export.

Hedge Your Home Heating Bill with Energy Stocks

All that volatility may not necessarily be terrible news from an investing standpoint, especially if your goal is to mitigate that 8.4% price increase for heating your home this winter by betting on companies in the oil business that profit while consumers get hit.

The big oil companies of the world -- ExxonMobil (XOM), BP (BP), Chevron (CVX), ConocoPhilips (COP), Occidental Petroleum (OXY), Devon Energy (DVN), Chesapeake Energy (CHK) and Anadarko Petroleum (APC) -- are well-positioned to benefit when the global commodities marketplace inflates crude prices.

For example, in October, ExxonMobil announced that its quarterly profit of $10.3 billion was up 41% from a year earlier, in part due to rising crude prices. In April, the company's Q1 earnings spiked 69%.

Investing in the top oil companies will also net you a dividend yield that typically ranges between 2% and 4%.

Sponsored Links

If these individual stocks are too pricey for your budget, you may want to seek out mutual funds that include some of these top companies among their heavily weighted holdings.

Supply disruptions overseas -- even in the short term -- increase demand for alternative sources, which is good news for companies focused on drilling and exploration. Anadarko, for example, has oilfields in several U.S. States and, further North, Canada's vast oil sands could be a continued boon for Suncor Energy (SU).

North Dakota and Montana are home to "The Bakken," a formation of shale covering about 200,000 square miles that is estimated by the U.S. Geological Survey to have as much as 4.3 billion barrels of potentially recoverable crude. Among the companies working to extract that oil are Continental Resources (CLR), Hess (HES), Oasis Petroleum (OAS), Kodiak Oil & Gas (KOG), Northern Oil & Gas (NOG), MDU Resources Group (HEW), EOG Resources (EOG), Whiting Petroleum (WLL) and Marathon Oil.

Pipeline owners such a Constellation Energy (CEG) may also their stock price rise in concert with oil prices, as could Schlumberger (SLB), the world's largest oilfield services company.

Oil refineries feel the pinch of rising costs per barrel as their costs to buy oil go up even as demand for their finished product drops. Offshore drilling companies such as Transocean (RIG) -- despite the Deepwater Horizon disaster -- and SeaDrill Limited (SDRL) are key players in that arena.

It Doesn't Have to Be Complicated

The simplest way to hedge against oil inflation for most Main Street investors is to consider ETFs designed with that very goal in mind.

In its prospectus, United States Heating Oil Fund (UHN) is described as "a way for investors and hedgers to manage their exposure to energy" and an ETF "designed to track in percentage terms the movements of heating oil prices." Year to date, the fund is up 5.6%, and it saw a return of 15.64% for a one-year period.

The United States Oil Fund (USO) is designed to track the price movements of light, sweet crude oil. Unfortunately its returns have been far from stellar, down approximately 21% so far this year and at -54.5% since its inception in 2006.

Other funds worth investigating are the iPath S&P GSCI Crude Oil TR Index ETN (OIL), SPDR S&P Oil & Gas Exploration & Production ETF (XOP) -- which has a three-year return of over 22% -- SPDR Oil & Gas Equipment & Services Fund (XES) and the PowerShares DB Crude Oil Long ETN (OLO) -- up a slight 0.14% for the year.

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There's never a dull moment on Wall Street, especially now that 2012 is tossing us into its first earnings season. Let's go over some of the items that will help shape the week that lies ahead.

1. I've been working on the railroad: It's hard to get investors excited about railway operators. Even in a friendly game of Monopoly, who gets excited about owning the four railroads?

However, the shortcomings of consumer rail aside, the railroads remain a cost effective way to move bulky goods around the country.

Investors will get a great snapshot of Dagny Taggart's throwback industry as CSX (CSX), Kansas City Southern (KSU), and Norfolk Southern (NSC) all report their latest quarterly results early in the week.

Don't laugh. There's a reason why Warren Buffett made a big bet on rail in acquiring Burlington Northern Santa Fe a couple of years ago. All three rail companies are expected to post healthy gains in profitability.

2. Raising a baby has no instant formula: Mead Johnson Nutrition (MJN) received the worst news possible for an infant formula maker last month: A 10-day-old baby had died from a bacterial infection, and the only thing that he had been ingesting was the company's Enfamil Premium Newborn formula.

Mead Johnson Nutrition's name was cleared a week later when tests conducted by the Food and Drug Administration showed that Enfamil did not cause the newborn's death.

This doesn't mean that it's return to business as usual for the company. Even though the stores that initially pulled the product from its shelves are back on board, consumers make take longer to be convinced.

We'll hear more from Mead Johnson Nutrition on the subject when the company reports on Thursday. Its actual numbers won't shed much light on the situation: The unfortunate event broke toward the end of the reporting period. However, the company should talk about how shipment trends are going so far this month.

3. Apple jacked: Three months ago, Apple (AAPL) stunned investors with a rare quarterly miss on the bottom line.
In its second quarterly report since Steve Jobs' untimely passing, the world's most valuable tech company will get a chance to prove that its fiscal fourth quarter slip was merely a fluke.

Analysts generally have been raising their iPhone targets, but lowering their iPad forecasts. The onslaught of $199 Kindle Fire tablets, as well as other manufacturers dumping their poor-selling tablets, has made Apple's once seemingly cheap $500 entry-level iPad one of the market's pricier offerings.

Apple's new digital textbook initiative may help spike iPad sales in 2012, but will that come at the expense of making the iconic tablet seem less cool?

4. Streaming our lives away: Netflix (NFLX) went from being one of Wall Street's biggest dogs two months ago to being one of the hottest investments.

Shares of Netflix have soared 55% since December, fueled primarily by the strong streaming trends that the video giant announced earlier this month. Rolling out in the U.K. and Ireland earlier this month also helped encourage skeptics into giving the company a second chance.

Sure, we all hated the Qwikster fiasco and the summertime price hike. Netflix has already braced investors to expect rocky, near-term results. Just three months ago, analysts figured that Netflix would earn $1.09 a share for its final quarter of 2011. Now those same pros see a profit of $0.55 a share. If you think that's bad, Netflix has warned of outright losses for all of 2012.

Wednesday's report will either help soothe or confirm investors' fears that Netflix will continue to shed subscribers, after losing 800,000 domestic subscribers during the hectic third quarter.

We have all of the prime plot elements that make many of the movies Netflix rents out so captivating. Now it's time to see where its most recent cliffhanger leaves us.

5. Java junkies on parade: Two of the country's busiest barista barons -- Starbucks (SBUX) and McDonald's (MCD) -- report this week.

Did somebody say McDonald's?

Yes. Starbucks loyalists may cringe at the iced caramel mocha that the Golden Arches offers for pocket change, but it's clear that the McCafe makeover at McDonald's has made it cheaper, and typically more convenient, to enjoy specialty coffee drinks.

Besides, Starbucks investors already know that McDonald's isn't killing Starbucks. Both companies have been sporting healthy growth on solid comps since the McCafe initiative took off two years ago. If anything, McDonald's may be educating future Starbucks customers on the joys of upgraded java.

Both caffeinated reports are coming, though McDonald's numbers will naturally come with a dipping cup of honey mustard for those McNuggets you ordered.

Longtime Motley Fool contributor Rick Munarriz does not owns shares in any of the stocks in this article, except for Netflix. The Motley Fool owns shares of Starbucks and Apple. Motley Fool newsletter services have recommended buying shares of Starbucks, Apple, Netflix, and McDonald's.

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A Serious Strategy

• Trend of Earnings: Earnings should be higher in the current quarter than they were a year ago in the same quarter.
• Earnings Persistence: Earnings per share should have increased in each year of the past five-year period; EPS should also have grown in each of the past four quarters (vs. the respective year-ago quarters).
• Long-Term Growth: EPS should be growing by at least 15% over the long term; a growth rate over 30% is exceptional.
• Earnings Acceleration: EPS growth for the current quarter (vs. the same quarter last year) should be greater than the average growth for the previous three quarters (vs. the respective three quarters from a year ago). EPS growth in the current quarter also should be greater than the long-term growth rate.

• Buffalo Wild Wings (BWLD)
• Cash America International, Inc. (CSH)
• Discover Financial Services (DFS)
• Synovis Life Technologies, Inc. (SYNO)
• Altisource Portfolio Solutions S.A. (ASPS)
• American Public Education, Inc. (APEI)

As you might expect with a growth strategy, the Zweig portfolio tends not to hold on to stocks for a long time. Usually it will hold a stock for a few months, though it is not averse to longer periods if the stock continues to be a prospect for more growth.

What I really like about the Zweig strategy is that, while it certainly would qualify as a growth approach, it doesn't look at growth in a vacuum. As you've seen, it examines earnings growth from a variety of angles, making sure that it is strong, improving, and sustainable.

In doing so, it allows you to find some fast-growing growth stocks that are not paper tigers, but instead solid prospects for continued long-term success.

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o. Salary of rank-and-file members of the U.S. Congress: $174,000.
o. Average annual Civil Service Retirement System benefits for retired members as of 2007: $63,696.
o. Profits legislators can make by trading on inside information: Priceless.

For more than five years, Congress has been looking into alleged conflicts of interest on Capitol Hill, investigating whether its members are trading stocks on "inside information" that they acquire while doing the people's business.

Four times in that period, lawmakers in the House have introduced the Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge Act to bar members from investing based on knowledge they gained in the course of their duties.

Three times, the proposed STOCK Act has died in committee. Will the fourth time be the charm? We'll find out soon when the Senate returns to work and joins the House of Representatives, which went back into session this week.

Something's Rotten in the District of Columbia

A lot of people have a lot to lose if this bill becomes law.

Late last year, 60 Minutes ran a report on the phenomenon of insider trading in Congress. Among the allegations leveled were suggestions that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) received preferential access to the Visa IPO -- just before the House began considering laws to regulate the credit card industry. The report also suggested that current Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) traded health-care stocks in 2009, even as his party was actively fighting a new law to reform health care. Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reports that rank-and-file members, and their staffers, were actively shorting U.S. Treasury bond funds in the middle of the financial crisis.

Two studies conducted by professor Alan Ziobrowski of Georgia State University suggest this problem has been going on for years.

The original study, published in 2004, found that stock market investments made by U.S. senators outperformed returns on the S&P 500 by 12 percentage points annually. A more recent study of trades made by U.S. representatives found a 6-point outperformance among House members -- less impressive than their senatorial brethren, but equivalent to what you might find among corporate officers trading shares of their own companies' stocks.

Rep. Louise Slaughter, co-author of the STOCK Act, explains: "If a congressman learns that his committee is about to do something that would affect a company, he can go trade on that because he is not obligated to keep that information confidential." There's no law that explicitly permits this, mind you. But there's no law that forbids it, either.

Barring censure by the House itself for acting "unethically," there's currently nothing anybody can do about it.

There Ought To Be a Law

This, in a nutshell, is why the STOCK Act is important. As matters stand, when you log onto your discount brokerage account and place an order to sell shares of ExxonMobil (XOM), for example, it's entirely possible that the guy buying them from you is a congressman who knows there's an oil and gas industry lobbyist making the rounds on Capitol Hill seeking tax breaks for Exxon. Or you may find yourself buying shares of Google (GOOG) -- from some senator who's working on the Stop Online Piracy Act.

The chances of this happening are small, to be sure. But just knowing -- or even suspecting -- that when you invest in stocks, you may be playing a rigged game against a government official in the know, could shake confidence in the stock market.

What America needs, and what Americans deserve, is a level playing field. We need to know that the laws Congress writes apply to them, and not just to us.

A Bit of Good News

Now here's the good news: For the first time since the STOCK Act's first introduction five years ago, there's a chance that this law will pass. Bipartisan conflicts among House leaders notwithstanding, the STOCK Act has one advantage working in its favor: tripartisan support.

And no, that's not a typo. In the Senate, STOCK Act legislation is sponsored by both Republican Scott Brown of Massachusetts, and Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand of New York. Last month, the two senators' bills went into the Homeland Security Committee and came out with support from, among others, Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. The bill might actually make it to the Senate floor for a vote. And in the House, the STOCK Act has attracted support from both sides of the aisle -- and an astounding 246 co-sponsors -- a 56% majority in its favor, before the bill even comes up for a vote.

Of course, this still means there are 189 House Representatives who still need convincing. Is your representative one of them? Find out -- and tell them what you think.

The Motley Fool owns shares of Google. Motley Fool newsletter services have recommended buying shares of Google and Visa. Motley Fool contributor Rich Smith does not own shares of any company mentioned above.

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Yahoo's (YHOO) embattled co-founder Jerry Yang is gone from the board, but for Third Point LLC, that's not good enough. The disgruntled Yahoo investor is aiming to take down company Chairman Roy Bostock and potentially three other directors. From Third Point's perspective, it's one down, one to go, and three more would be a bonus.

Let's look at how this fight may play out and who's likely to get beaten and bruised.

Fight! Fight!

Bostock has already received a tongue-lashing from Third Point, which holds a 5.2% stake in Yahoo. In November, Third Point called for Bostock and Yang to resign, citing conflicts of interest in the company's alleged pursuit of "sweetheart" deals with private-equity firms. These deals, Third Point alleged, would allow the current management and board to remain "entrenched" by selling only a slice of the company, rather than the entire operation at a higher premium.

Third Point wanted Yang and Bostock to turn their board seats over to two Third Point representatives. It's worth noting that Yahoo has yet to name a board replacement for Yang. It could be keeping the seat vacant should it strike a settlement with Third Point.

Yahoo may already realize that engaging in a fight to keep Bostock would be fruitless, given his lackluster support at the last annual shareholder meeting, when 20.1% of investors voted to kick Bostock out. That's nearing a dangerously high level, say proxy advisers.

"When you get to 30% of votes cast in opposition, that's typically high enough were you begin to see some response from the company to deal with the issue," said Patrick McGurn, executive director at Institutional Shareholder Services, which advises institutional investors on how to vote their proxy cards.

Since Yahoo's 2011 meeting, the stock has largely traded at the same level, and the company removed CEO Carol Bartz, who failed to grow revenues. Investors panned her recent replacement, PayPal executive Scott Thompson. What's more, Yahoo's strategic plan to enhance shareholder value via a sale of its Asian assets, though reportedly getting closer to fruition, has yet to materialize.

Who else is in Third Point's sights?

In its initial letter to Yahoo directors in September, Third Point said it also wanted to dump directors Art Kern, Vyomesh Joshi, and Susan James and present its own slate of replacements.

But unseating these three directors may prove more difficult than ousting Bostock. In the last shareholder meeting, Kern had only 5.2% of investors vote against his re-election to the board, while James was less at 4.9% and Joshi 4%, according to Yahoo's filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

"A lot of these fights settle out before it comes to a shareholder vote," McGurn says. "As the parties begin to see the early returns on the proxies, it creates a game of chicken."

Other proxy advisers agree: When a company and dissident shareholders name opposing slates of directors, the reaction in the stock market alone can set the tone for a potential settlement.

Yahoo has played this game before, reaching a settlement with major shareholder activists and billionaire investor Carl Icahn several years ago. Icahn went as far as to name a competing slate of Yahoo directors, after the existing board rejected the Microsoft (MSFT) buyout bid for $33 a share, claiming it didn't appropriately value the company. In the end, Icahn and the struggling Internet pioneer struck a deal whereby Icahn received a board seat and the right to appoint two directors.

The Chickens Come Home to Roost

Assuming Yahoo isn't sold before the company's next shareholder meeting, it wouldn't be surprising to see Third Point and Yahoo strike a deal for the hedge fund to gain representation on Yahoo's board. But if Third Point's board representatives don't get a seat at the table on any committee tasked with selling Yahoo or seeking ways to increase shareholder value, Third Point may soon lose interest in the company.

However, in dealing with PDL BioPharma in 2007, Third Point sought board representation and got it, according to research from FactSet Research Systems.

On 10-1-2007, the company announced in a press release that its board of directors had decided to actively seek a sale of the company as a whole or of its key assets. The company also announced that Mr. Mark McDade resigned as the company's CEO and director. ... Third Point applauded the board's decision to seek a sale of the company but was disappointment that the sales process was being led by a board that did not include one of its representatives. In light of the company's continuing refusal to give Third Point a board seat to oversee the sales process, it reduced its ownership stake to 5.1%.

On 11-9-2007, Third Point reported that it had sold its entire ownership stake and no longer had beneficial ownership of the company's shares.

Third Point a Short-Timer?

Suppose Third Point does win a Yahoo board seat and the company is still in the strategic review process and exploring its options. If Third Point got shut out of a prized strategic committee seat, that could be enough for it to walk away from its Yahoo stake.

On the other hand, none of this speculation matters if Yahoo moves forward and finds a buyer before the next shareholder meeting. Don't forget that Yang is still out there. He's no longer encumbered with having to live by a fiduciary duty to recuse himself as a Yahoo board member from any buyout discussions he may wish to participate in. And he has the benefit of historical knowledge of all the various options the company has entertained up until this past week.

It's not unreasonable, then, to think that Third Point may not be relevant to Yahoo and its investors down the road.

Motley Fool contributor Dawn Kawamoto owns no stock in the companies mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of Microsoft and Yahoo. Motley Fool newsletter services have recommended buying shares of Yahoo and Microsoft and creating a bull call spread position in Microsoft.

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