Shareholder Backs Yahoo!, Supports Independence

mikkl666 writes "In a follow-up to yesterday's story about the struggle between Microsoft and Yahoo!, major Yahoo! shareholder Legg Mason has announced that they are ready to back the company in their effort to keep out of Microsoft's grip. According to portfolio manager Bill Miller, 'the problem is Microsoft blundered with the letter this weekend. Telling the shareholders you're going to take something away from them is not a way to get their support'. Nevertheless, he believes Microsoft will end up paying what it takes to own Yahoo."

Comments

Typical MS Arrogance

[amplt1337]

They're approaching a Yahoo! acquisition with all the grace of the Mongols taking over a medieval village -- "If you let us in, you'll get a rough deal; if you resist, you'll get an even rougher one."

All it takes is for a couple more major shareholders to insist that Yahoo! is worth more than MS wants to pay, and the bluff will be very effectively called; you can't do a hostile takeover if you can't find shareholders willing to sell a controlling interest, and the shareholders are ultimately the ones who would suffer from an overly low valuation. Sure, maybe the Board is holding out for an unduly high valuation, but more likely MS is mis-valuing Yahoo! -- though I'm sure Yahoo!'s value would drop to whatever MS paid for it pretty quickly, if Ballmer really wants to get this far out of the company's core business.

All the more reason for major shareholders to turn their noses to the deal.

Re:It's a start

[RobBebop]

I have no idea who Legg Mason is, or what influence he has

Legg Mason is an investment firm that owns a 6% stake of Yahoo.

This is actually 83,843,501 votes AGAINST the current MSFT offer.

Re:How to clean out your Yahoo Mail account

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems a little dumb to pay $20 to purge the account when you can easily use FetchYahoo! located at http://fetchyahoo.twizzler.org/ or http://sourceforge.net/projects/fetchyahoo

-eg

Re:Go for it Bill!

[maxume]

Microsoft is awash in not just cash, but income:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=MSFT

The make a net income in excess of $1 billion a month. They would recover from a disastrous deal in less than two years(because they have $19 billion in cash; 19+24=43, close enough to the offer of $45 billion)

They are trying to acquire Yahoo because they think it is a cheap way to gain revenue and they think they can operate Yahoo more effectively than Yahoo is currently operating Yahoo. Maybe they can't improve Yahoo all that much, but they still wouldn't lose all of the $45 billion asking price, so they are willing to try.

Yahoo is still trying to poison the deal:

http://news.google.com/news?q=yahoo+google+ad+deal

(this is fresh news, get it while it's hot)