It’s hard to entertain sale offers for a company while investors await a ruling on corporate governance and worry whether a well-heeled activist shareholder is mounting a proxy fight to remove the founder and chairman from the board. With the threat of an imminent proxy fight filing looming, the Barnes & Noble board is reportedly close to finalizing a peace deal with Ron Burkle’s Yucaipa that would settle his lawsuit instead of leaving it to the judge in Delaware. The expected deal as reported by the WSJ (and then the NYT and others) would add three new directors to the […]