In a letter addressed to Yahoo's board of directors, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has given Yahoo three weeks to accept Microsoft Corp's $31-a-share cash-and-stock offer. "If we have not concluded an agreement within the next three weeks, we will be compelled to take our case directly to your shareholders, including the initiation of a proxy contest to elect an alternative slate of directors," Ballmer wrote.
Then he threatened to reduce Microsoft's offer if Yahoo failed to meet the deadline: "That action will have an undesirable impact on the value of your company from our perspective which will be reflected in the terms of our proposal." According to a person close to the search engine, Yahoo's board is currently reviewing the letter.
Thanks HappyAndyK for the tip!
View: Full Story on Reuters
Then he threatened to reduce Microsoft's offer if Yahoo failed to meet the deadline: "That action will have an undesirable impact on the value of your company from our perspective which will be reflected in the terms of our proposal." According to a person close to the search engine, Yahoo's board is currently reviewing the letter.
Thanks HappyAndyK for the tip!
View: Full Story on Reuters
LOL @ the flying chairs comment! I'm sure it's going to be that and much more!
I wonder if Google will recruit the old Yahoo board, now that will make for some behind the scenes blood letting
"Go get those pussies Steve, you know it will be a match made in hell!"
Last edited by boho on 06 Apr 2008 - 06:47
I wonder if Google will recruit the old Yahoo board, now that will make for some behind the scenes blood letting
"Go get those pussies Steve, you know it will be a match made in hell!"
ill considered take overs should have the name of AMD and ATi merger right on top. That's the worst IMO. I hope this doesnt end up like that one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_takeover
How is this unethical? Yahoo is trading at $27-28 per share now. $31 is a pretty reasonable and quite frankly generous offer. Ballmer just stated that if they don't accept it, they will find another way to acquire Yahoo. And speaking about acquisitions in general, it is a common business practice. It happens everyday. There's always a bigger fish, you know.
How is this unethical? Yahoo is trading at $27-28 per share now. $31 is a pretty reasonable and quite frankly generous offer. Ballmer just stated that if they don't accept it, they will find another way to acquire Yahoo. And speaking about acquisitions in general, it is a common business practice. It happens everyday. There's always a bigger fish, you know.
Agreed. By rejecting Microsoft's offer, they're rejecting a lot of extra money, which could possibly been seen as a violation of their legal responsibilities to their shareholders.
Perhaps you've never heard of Microsoft Windows.
Seriously, could they be that desperate for a user base that they are willing to sacrifice a huge part of their assets at a time when they are hemhorraging money from various IP suits and tariffs? So desperate that they really need the immediate gain even despite having to convert Yahoo from BSD & OSS just to engulf their user base rather than the long-term benefits of investing in R&D to drive innovation in the industry, to improve their products, and to grow their own market share?
If MS are buying Yahoo for their user base, what if a lot of users jump ship when this happens? Then they are stuck with a few more web services that are probably duplicates of their own, and it would have been something MS could have made themselves, except their vision was to make the MS services the way they are now so Yahoo could very well have a lot of changes made that users just don't like, because MS isn't able to compete as it is now. You can't just put on a band-aid over a huge hole like that.
Speaking of the users, there are antitrust implications as well that have to be dealt with, as if MS buys Yahoo, they eliminate their closest competitor and capture enough market share to possibly overtake Google without having to lift a finger, automatically just because they bought into that market share. I guess they're going to argue that Google bought Doubleclick, but MS are already under antitrust sanctions and investigations in multiple countries, so Google does not have to qualify in the same way that Microsoft does.
If MS are buying Yahoo for their IP, what could possibly be worth getting that they couldn't in a licensing deal, and why do they want to spend even more money to convert all of Yahoo's servers over to Windows-based ones? What do they have to gain by rewriting a lot of their software to run in a completely different environment, if they were going to have to do development anyway, why pay so much to do it instead of building up your own software?
Steve at Mix08 really did drop the ball with regards to any takeover being friendly with yahoo and now offering a reduced share offer is just nuts. If MS did want to compete with google etc wouldnt it be worth maybe trying to find the next killer app instead of buying yourself out of a hole that was of MS's own creating. Yahoo really has nothing to offer MS in term of new type technologies. And if Steve thinks that advertisig on the net is the new big thing hes again 5 yrs to late.
And if to say they dont care Steve is now trying 1980's type bullying business practices all of which are going to annoy Yahoo and implicate him even more in antitrust issues. Steve if you dont like it maybe its time you went monkey boy on there arses!!!
FFS!!!
I hope Yahoo's shareholders tell the board to **** off and force them to take the offer.
I hope Yahoo's shareholders tell the board to **** off and force them to take the offer.
+1
At last someone who knows how negotiations work on a corporate level!
At last someone who knows how negotiations work on a corporate level![/quote]
I've been through two acquisitions myself before, the last one being MS itself.
Steve Ballmer has given Yahoo has three weeks to accept
Most of it was copy and paste anyway, why did you feel the need to inject your own error?
Back to the topic:
I predicted this would happen the day it was announced 2 months ago - funny I can't find my post from that day.
Those who consider this "unethical" either don't have a clue as to how corporate America works in general or they don't understand how fiduciary responsibility works for board members of publicly held companies.
It is much more unethical for a board of directors to allow their company's value to drop for almost a fiscal quarter while an extremely favorable offer is on the table because they fear for their postions.
Steve Ballmer has given Yahoo has three weeks to accept
Most of it was copy and paste anyway, why did you feel the need to inject your own error?
Back to the topic:
I predicted this would happen the day it was announced 2 months ago - funny I can't find my post from that day.
Those who consider this "unethical" either don't have a clue as to how corporate America works in general or they don't understand how fiduciary responsibility works for board members of publicly held companies.
It is much more unethical for a board of directors to allow their company's value to drop for almost a fiscal quarter while an extremely favorable offer is on the table because they fear for their postions.
Critisizing the contributors (about a grammatic error LOL) of the website which slogan is: "Where unprofessional journalism looks better" is really uncool around here, dude.
(n)
Steve Ballmer has given Yahoo has three weeks to accept
Those who consider this "unethical" either don't have a clue as to how corporate America works in general or they don't understand how fiduciary responsibility works for board members of publicly held companies.
It is much more unethical for a board of directors to allow their company's value to drop for almost a fiscal quarter while an extremely favorable offer is on the table because they fear for their postions.
Can't be said more clearer than this. This happens in corporations around the world everyday. It's part of life for them and you gotta live with it.
People are making big "HooHaa" about the whole deal just because Microsoft in involved here (this is the fact please don't deny it).
Stocks?
Besides, company growth is good for it's shareholders
Besides, company growth is good for it's shareholders
Sure, it's good for the shareholders to line their pockets with even more money... But buyouts like this just lead to monopolies which is BAD.
Hotmail's not unusable, but it's certainly less inter operable and functional than before with lack of pop3 support. Plus a lot of people have a hotmail account just as a throw-away, or because they were forced to use passport for a part of an MS site or to get on MSN or whatever. It's probably the same for yahoo (minus the passport thing) so how are you going to compare the two's subscriber base?
The kids who criticize MS back then grew up. Maybe them kids who criticize MS now should too.
Commenting has either been disabled on this article or you are not logged in. Click here to login or register, its free!
Note: Anonymous commenting is disabled in order to keep the quality of responses to a high standard.