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Microsoft Offered $40 a Share For Yahoo
fistfullast33l writes "Bloomberg is reporting that a recently unsealed court case by shareholders against Yahoo reveals that Microsoft offered $40 a share for the Internet search company in January 2007 and Yahoo turned it down. We've extensively discussed Microsoft's bid for Yahoo earlier this year for $33 a share, which was rebuffed. Investor Carl Icahn has launched a proxy fight against Yahoo over the spurning of the Microsoft deal." CWmike notes Computerworld's coverage of the revelations: "The complaint places much of the blame on [Yahoo CEO Jerry] Yang, describing him as someone with a 'well-known' antipathy toward Microsoft who acted out of a personal interest to keep Yahoo independent. Something wrong with that? Oh, yeah... public company."
Actually, 82% of Yahoo's float is held by institutions and mutual funds.
Jerry Yang's job isn't to do whats good for Yahoo, it's to do whats good for the share holders. Maybe you forget that they are the people who actually own the company. Yang needs to demonstrate how Yahoo will deliver more than double its January value to it's shareholders.
That's part of the deal for taking public money, if you don't like the deal don't take the money.
Actually, what you're referring to is the "business judgment rule," which says that the Board's business judgment will not be challenged in court absent a showing of bad faith or being on both sides of a transaction. The Board is *required* to focus on maximizing wealth for the company's owners, i.e., the shareholders. However, under the "business judgment rule," the Board may be able to justify its decision to refuse a higher tender offer in that it better understands the long-term business implications of the company and thinks that not selling will be better off in the long run for shareholders.
Actually profits don't play into it at all. The simply reason for that is that profit doesn't take into account the opportunity cost and time value of capital. He really does have to maximise shareholder value.
Infinite time means everything that can happen, will. You being you is absolutely incidental. You do not exist.
Really?
Shareholders give companies money to expand, grow, and operate. More over they do it during times when the company cannot raise money through bank or debt issuances. In fact the restrictions a company takes on when taking out a loan are often much more onerous then the messiest of shareholder revolts.
Have you ever tried to start up a business? Do it, and try to get a loan before you've even set up shop. You'll be laughed out of almost every bank you go to, and if you do get a loan you'll probably be paying 500 basis points (5%) over prime. It's much less onerous to give up some control of your company to outside shareholders for their cash. At least then you don't have the exorbitant interest charges (and other potential restrictions) that come with taking out a loan.
Now specifically about Yahoo, Yahoo did not have to offer its stock publicly. If Jerry Yang wanted to run Yahoo like his personal dominion he didn't have to sell 2.6 million shares to the public in 1996 (plus the countless other secondary offerings Yahoo made). He could have retained control, but he chose take the shareholder's money and the many headaches that came along with it.
The sun beams down on a brand new day, No more welfare tax to pay, Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light...
That is true but provided you are sensible windows isn't all that expensive.
Per thier support lifecycle policy MS says they will offer security updates for at least 7 years after the release of the next version.
What that means is as long as you buy the latest version OEM (you can use downgrade rights if you don't want to run the new version yet) the PC will almost certainly have been retired before the version of windows it shipped with
Some companies end up paying a bit more (exactly how much more is hard to tell because details of volume license prices don't seem easy to find online) for windows because they want the extra flexibility volume licensing gives them (yes there are reimage rights but they are relatively restricted) but even then windows will be a pretty small proportion of the TCO of the machine.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Well, I don't know about the rest of that 4.5%, but I'm typing this on Win2K Pro because it is reliable as hell(Never had a BSOD,unlike my XP rig) resource light(typing on a 1.1Ghz Celeron with 512Mb of RAM and it runs great even while multitasking) and it never gives me any grief. So if this one ever dies I have a 1.5Ghz Duron board sitting in the closet that I'll slap in the case,load Win2K pro on and just keep on chugging. Because after fixing busted WinXP and Vista boxes all day I'm a firm believer in "If it ain't broke,don't fix it" and for me Win2K Pro certainly ain't broke. But that is my 02c,YMMV
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
There is a name for this - it is called the agent-principle problem. The principles of the company are the shareholders, or if it is in financial distress, the debt holders. They own the company. The managers of the company are the agents and they are supposed to act in the best interests of the principles. This means that they should be returning maximum value to the share holders, either through paying out cash or investing it to create value (growth is not the same thing as value, with a negative ROIC it can lose money).
You may not like this but it is the deal the Yang made when he IPO'd Yahoo! If he wanted to remain in control he should have kept the company private. This is management hubris pure and simple. If I was a shareholder of Yahoo! then I would sue as well.