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Yahoo Sued for Spurning Microsoft
tuxgeek writes "In the continuing saga of Yahoo resisting a Microsoft buy out, Yahoo is now being sued by its shareholders. 'Two Detroit pension funds have sued Yahoo Inc. and its board of directors, saying they breached their duties to shareholders in trying to thwart a takeover by Microsoft Corp. The lawsuit was filed in Delaware Chancery Court on Thursday by lawyers representing Detroit's police and fire retirement system and general retirement system, as well as 'all other similarly situated public shareholders.'"
Lovely, some short term investors would liek to crack open the golden goose and get allt he eggs now. Which may not be a bad idea (I can't imagine Yahoo!'s share price going up very significantly unless they have something very surprising in the works. If I was a shareholder I'd probably want to sue them too, but I'd feel dirty about it (but rolling around in money would probably cure that).
Everyone is greedy, by and large. Get over it. Most of us are. In the long run, both sides are about greed. Yahoo is (presumably) makign the argument that shareholder value will be hurt by the merger and these guys are making the value that it will be hurt by avoiding the takeover. Both sides are greedy, fundamentally.
the managers may feel that they want to take Yahoo in a certain direction not dictated by microsoft, and that is all well and good, but it sounds less noble when you realize that the money they are using to do that is not theirs. It is the money of the tens of thousands of investors in their company that has allowed them to do this. No one is a hero here.
No, and here's why. The idea isn't that the price is a problem, although it might be for some investors. They feel that any takeover bid from microsoft might be worth more than their stock is liable to be in the near future. They also feel that there are two possible outcomes for their suit. If it is a threat, Yahoo will cave to the deal and they will get their desired price. If it isn't a threat, the markets will not regard it as such and their stock price will not go down.
But....
I don't think that is the whole story. It isn't an insider affair, IMO. What it might be is a hedge against volatility. The only thing better than knowing if your stock will suddenly increase in value is knowing WHEN your stock will suddenly increase in value. If you can force the issue via legal action (iffy) then you can justify the purchase of more shares on the notion that your lawsuit will result in a much higher share price ue to a buyout. So. Large firm sees buyout rebuffed. Large firm sees a chance to reap known profits via legal action. Large firm sues.
I am not suggesting that these firms bought Yahoo in order to bring this lawsuit. What I am suggesting was that it seemed to be a convenient way around future price fluctuations--not an insider job.
To have someone deny me that chance based on a childish rivalry would really upset me.
There's *so* much more going on here than that.
The most important thing is that Microsoft would destroy the company as it's known now. They'll mess with the back-end technology, swapping in their own, they'll merge some stuff with Windows Live and vice versa, they'll kill anything that's a threat to their desktop hold or they'll limit its prime interoperability to Microsoft products. Features will become dependent on IE and Silverlight.
In short, its goals will go from being a premiere portal and online services company to being anything that can maintain and enhance Microsoft's dominance. Lots of people who work there would rather work for the former than the later (and it *will* hemorrhage key employees if they're bought for that reason). And some of them even have a damn good argument that the company is worth more long term if it serves the former goal. It's not unlikely they'll achieve it, and especially as the desktop becomes less and less relevant, I think they have the potential to outdo Microsoft in terms of their worth.
Short term, of course, you can get quite a good cash-out on the offer MS made... especially compared to anything else available while the markets in general are struggling. And lots of suits and shareholders don't know how to think any other way than short-term gains.
Tweet, tweet.
I hear they are doing horribly.
FFS.
Gambling doesn't require a house but most of the games we think of do. The reason people aren't usually out there making money on the craps circuit isn't because of the ups and downs. It is because the odds in craps are DESIGNED so that you will never win, on average. The expected value of one dollar played on a craps table over the long run is about 92 cents. In the end, you are losing money. On the contrary, there are games of chance that people do make a living on. Very famously, people have made a living on poker. In this case, the house takes a cut, but it doesn't impact the odds of winning or make it so that the expected value of a dollar in over the long run is less than a dollar out.
I will continue to say that it is ignorant of you to compare gambling to equity finance. Do you understand what portfolio diversification is? It is almost PRECISELY investing in the average stock in order to limit damage to the portfolio due to volatility. You find two investments (or more, really) that will respond differently to a single market change, and you invest a little in both. the ma expected return is lowered, but the variance is lowered even more. It's a fundamental tenet of smart finance and it is nothing like gambling at all.
Are there nonzero risks in the stock market? Sure. If you want to define gambling as taking risks beyond your control with your money than treasury bills are gambling. You said before that the US has never defaulted on its explicit debt and you are correct, but the risk is still there. If you want a risk free investment strategy, take your money and put it in a checking account. It is protected by the FDIC, some even offer a small rate of return, and there is no risk. Of course, you will barely beat inflation and you will forgo 100,000's of dollars worth in lost compounded interest, but it's your money.
Yep. With Zimbra, Kolab, and Citadel that makes six. However, the magazines and newspapers don't dare write a word about them, even if they would. In addition to being one of the last remaining advertisers, MS has fifth-columnists working against competition in many places. It's not a conspiracy, just greed and/or politics.
The main reasons people use Exchange is because it is tied into Active Directory exclusively which is tied into their Windows Desktops exclusively. It also tied exclusively into Outlook (which most businesses have due to the Office monopoly), the functionality in Exchange mirrors that for Outlook; they are a perfect lock-in by design. It always comes back to illegally leveragingthe Windows/Office monopoly and vendor lock in.There fixed that for you. It's one aspect near the heart of the 10+ year anti-trust trial MS lost in 2004 and lost in appeal for in 2007.
If Windows or any of the products worked with standards, then it would be possible to swap out components. One reason for the extreme suckitude is that the lock-in guarantees no competition. Old habits die hard and going way back, MS DOS 4 sucked rocks a market for DR-DOS which in turn caused MS-DOS 5 which unlike 4 was usable. Same for the Windows-Outlook-Exchange, except now there is lock-in to such an extent that businesses have to be quite serious about dropping MS and getting into functional products.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.