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The latest letter to shareholders from Yahoo's board of directors urging them to retain the current management, rather than tossing them aside in favor of the slate backed by Carl Icahn.

With Yahoo's financial performance looking worse than Jake LaMotta at the end of 'Raging Bull' (put it in your Netflix queue, kids), the board knows they are in for a beating on August 1st, when Yahoo's oft-delayed annual meeting finally takes place.

The current board would like to be the future board, too. A letter from Yahoo's board to its shareholders asked them to retain the team that's in place today.

"Your Board of Directors believes strongly that the Icahn-Microsoft agenda - as presented to us jointly last week - will destroy stockholder value at Yahoo!, serving only their very narrow special interests, clearly not your interests," the company said.

Of Icahn, Yahoo said, "He is well-known as a corporate agitator with a short-term approach to his investments." The company contends, and given Icahn's history probably with accuracy, he wants a quick exit at a nice profit from the approximately $25 per share price he's paid for his stake.

Yahoo's letter stated they would sell to Microsoft for a price of $33 per share. It's suspected Microsoft no longer wishes to do a deal at this valuation, despite Icahn's involvement.

We expect the activist investor to respond in some way to this at his blog, the Icahn Report, as he has done to other criticism over his Yahoo deal involvement.