Icahn Wants WCI Delay

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn is still agitating for change at homebuilder and real estate services firm WCI Communities (WCI Quote) after a failed takeover bid.

The activist investor has requested that the WCI board postpone its annual meeting, scheduled to be held June 15, because he believes the election of directors might jeopardize an ongoing auction of the company.

"From our perspective, this sale process is just another camouflage to entrench yourselves for another year," Icahn writes in a letter to the WCI board. "Your response that you are not now prepared to delay the annual meeting strongly validates this view," he continues.

A call to a spokesman at WCI was not immediately returned.

In March, Icahn launched a failed attempt, via a $22-a-share tender offer, to purchase the Bonita Springs, Fla., luxury homebuilder. The Icahn offer, which expired last week, valued the company at $920 million. But the WCI board said it was not adequate and included too many provisions, such as one that would have removed a poison-pill provision that blocks hostile takeovers.

WCI has since been trying to sell itself.

"You failed to allow stockholders who wished to do so to sell into our $22 per share tender offer," Icahn writes. "We would again like to remind the board of its fiduciary duty to meet reasonable requests that clearly benefit all stockholders."

Icahn, who has proposed his own list of directors to sit on the WCI board, is asking that the board postpone its meeting for up to 30 days.

Icahn made his buyout offer for WCI after taking a roughly 15% stake in it.

WCI's stock closed at $20.94 Thursday.