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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."
If he had a 'well known' antipathy for Microsoft then it was known when he was hired as CEO. Presumably the board of directors considered it a good thing or they would have hired someone else. Investment is risk. If you can't accept that risk don't invest.
It's about taking your January share price of $19 and doubling it into $40 over the course of a few short months, not to mention your shareholders, and perhaps most importantly vested employees. Sure, Jerry has a lot of cash with or without Microsoft but employees with shares could literally double their investments overnight with this deal. I'm sure theres a good bit of internal angst.
People used to speak of Microsoft Millionaires, this could have made a few Yahoo Millionaires. Chances are Ichann will get a shot to do what Jerry should have done.
.... He made a long-term decision instead of thinking about short-term profits. He's being sued for looking beyond the next few quarters.
If you think Yahoo can't turn it around, then yeah. He fucked up big-time. But if you think (as I'm sure he does) that Yahoo can be an innovative company that can step in to fill the gap as Microsoft declines, then he did the right thing. Hardly matters either way though. (Some profit now > Lots of profit over time) in the eyes of wall street.
Microsoft who acted out of a personal interest to keep Yahoo independent. Something wrong with that? Oh, yeah... public company.
There's nothing wrong with acting in personal interests if there's a reasonable argument that it coincides with shareholder interests. And in this case, there certainly is.
Look at Google's value. Which companies are in any position at all to grab any significant share of what they're doing in the market? It's a short list. Yahoo's on it.
If you were holding onto a significant chunk of one of those companies, would you want to (a) sell it now for a quick but small profit or (b) figure out what changes you need to make in the company to have it better compete with Google and acquire value on that level?
Some shareholders might choose a. But b is certainly reasonable.
Frankly, so is the Microsoft antipathy. People like to talk as if the haters are just irrational folks who got up on the anti-MS side of the bed. Nevermind that there's a significant real technical and business history that would make any sane and competent person wary of them.
The web as a platform is open and expanding. Windows as a platform is stagnating and closed. Which do you want to be invested in for the next 10 years?
Tweet, tweet.
The small shareholders, sure. But not the big ones, which comprise the majority of the people who are going to screw over Yang. You think Ichann, or any of the bank managers, mutual fund managers, hedge fund managers, etc. that have holdings in Yahoo are being run by people running to take out payday loans? Doubtful.
Why on earth would you hold out for $31?
Well, as but one example, Carl Ichan is reported to own about 50 million shares in Yahoo ( http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080513/yahoo_icahn.html ) so a stock increase from $30 to $31 represents a profit of about $50 million. Now, call me wacky, but that sounds like a good reason to me...
Yahoo would not have survived to 2009 if all it's employees quit. That's why Yang made sure $2 billion of the purchase price would go to employee severance plans. There's probably been some disruption anyway. Wouldn't you have a resume on the street with all of the FUD and BS being flung? The severance plans gave employees a reason to stick around and be fired by M$, or just keep on working if the deal fell through.
Painting this to be a personal thing by Yang is nuts. Yahoo and M$ were getting along famously until M$ decided to launch a hostile takeover.
/sigh I have no problem with your mention of Google, but Apple... Really? Like for realsies? Sorry bro, I'm into computers... Not toys.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
Apple is innovating?
They take technology that exists in lots of other places, and put it in a prettier package. OSX is nice, but it's BSD with pretty graphics.
The iPhone is nice, but it's a cleaned up version of the Nokia E70 (see: http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=iphone)
Apple is known NOT to listen to their customers. They listen to Steve Jobs (and for their benefit, I might add).
Honestly, Microsoft has been around the block on these types of things before, and while Google and Apple are big threats, I don't consider Microsoft a 'stupid' company by any means -- I feel they will have a period of crap (oh wait, Vista...), reorganize and come back stronger.
And in the end it's better for us all if they do. Although if MS ever put out an OS that is better than Linux on security, and better than OSX on ease of use and prettiness -- Slashdotters would still decry it. So I guess on this site, it's lose lose for them. But their bank accounts are still rather full.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Welcome to Slashdot to see people who do not have a basic grasp of finance or business to rant about it.
For one, the majority of shares in most public companies today are held by institutional investors. The next big share holders tend to be PE folks (like Icahn, KKR etc), followed by insurance companies, hedge funds etc.
Secondly, you cannot have your cake and eat it too. If you went public, you did it for the money - and you can't cry foul when you do something stupid and when people hold you accountable. If you wanted your freedom, you should have stayed private. Sad, but true.
Now, one of the biggest advantages of going public is that you raise capital - and when investors put in their money, they expect returns. Now, some people like Icahn are just vultures who are looking for an excuse to make a quick buck, but most other investors are not happy, either, with the way Yahoo handled the situation.
Like or dislike does not enter business. If it makes business and strategic sense, you do it. If it does not, you don't. If you are interested in discussing morals, ethics and "feelings", you should have kept the company private and done whatever the hell you wanted. I haven't seen anything that indicates that a merger between Yahoo and Microsoft will be a bad thing. It may throw in a little more competition; however I can see why Google is worried - they run the risk of being called a monopoly if Yahoo gets bought out. At the end of the day, once you have shareholders, you have a responsibility to them. You may not like it, but you should have thought of it before you went after the greenbacks.
Oh yeah I feel real sorry for the guy who didn't cash out for $1,500,000,000 because he could have made $1,550,000,000
Which may be exactly why MS is so interested in acquiring Yahoo. They do a lot of the same things. And so does Google. So, instead of MS vs. Yahoo vs. Google, it would be MS Yahoo vs. Google.
Sometimes the point isn't to expand into new markets, but to gain control of the ones you're already in.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
Not exactly...many investors are gambling rather than investing.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Perhaps you are - but a great many people are into toys. People aren't buying iPhone's because it's the most useful ultra-portable computer around (it isn't even close) - they're buying it because it's fun.
Yeah, I'd be watching Apple again, too. Not their desktop computer lines, but they have a lot more going for them than that.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
They take technology that exists in lots of other places, and put it in a prettier package. OSX is nice, but it's BSD with pretty graphics. No, it's not. You should consider learning about software technology sometime.
Teh surpreme court ruling does not matter.
The shareholders legally run the company and as such can do whatever they hell they like including firing CEO's who do not sell out for get rich quick schemes.
You can try to protect the company and what you feel is the best but the shareholders can legally fire you for doing so if they disagree with yoru directions. Actually they fire the board and create a new one who replaces you but still.
I wish these financial institutions would return to long term growth.
http://saveie6.com/
It's 3.3% ... depending how long it takes to make that dollar that could be very large or very small. Just because the numbers are big doesn't make them insignificant... you always have to measure in %, and by % 3.3% for a day is a good day for most stocks.
They control a dominant position in the market because they've been there for so long. Looking at the statistics though, they are hemorrhaging market share in the laptop world (which is where the future is) and are also losing share elsewhere, though not as quickly. Remember, nobody stays at the top forever. "The king is dead. Long live the king" and all that, though I think they've still got some life in them.
They're not down for the count but they need to do something soon to recover what they've already lost.
Apple has 10% of the overall market, but something like 40% of the new laptop market, if I remember correctly the stats I read recently. With more and more people moving to the laptop and mobile market, that does constitute a formidable giant, especially when you consider they've been around as long as MS and are gaining position, rather than losing it.
That said, it's a cyclical market, Apple floundered for a long time and still survived. Microsoft will be able to do the same, at least for a little while.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
The shareholders legally run the company and as such can do whatever they hell they like including firing CEO's who do not sell out for get rich quick schemes.
All batshit irrelevant to the point at hand.
You can try to protect the company and what you feel is the best but the shareholders can legally fire you for doing so if they disagree with yoru directions. Actually they fire the board and create a new one who replaces you but still.
Of course you can fire the CEO, but that's not the point, dumbass. It's that you can't sue the CEO just because you think he passed up the chance to make a quick buck.
Of course they are, and they continue to innovate. The iPhone interface isn't an innovation? And are you fucking kidding me about the so-called "Best Page In The Universe"? Anyone who could have such a shitty-looking website doesn't have the least goddamned clue about design, or its importance, especially when it comes to human interface. Microsoft and Dell have also introduced dramatic innovations, and I'm fully aware that that statement is heresy on Slashdot, but give credit where it is due (and I'm saying this as a Mac user). The problem is that the word doesn't mean what most people think it means (apologies to Inigo Montoya). From Dictionary.com:
innovate : to introduce something new; make changes in anything established.
People usually mistakenly conflate "innovate" with "invent", and to say that any of these three companies has not innovated would be wrong. Apple's innovations were to bring geeky technology to the masses in a way that made sense and were useful (GUI, CD-ROM drive, USB, Unix); Microsoft of course were the ones who spread computing far, wide, and deep; Dell's innovations were in manufacturing and sales, and they can be fairly credited with commoditizing the personal computer. In my opinion Michael Dell has done more to drive down the cost of computers, thereby bringing heretofore artificially expensive gadgets into the mainstream, than anyone else. Like him or loathe him, his place in computing history is secure.
A HAHAHAHAHAHA. You honestly believe that after some pending MS collapse that 3 different linux distributions will have the OS top market share? And you got modded Informative...
The level of self affirmation on this site has hit a new level.
If you think you're right, you gotta do better than "Hah! You're wrong! ..."
Care to explain where he was mistaken?
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Even in the corporate world, users are ready to get off the upgrade treadmill at Windows XP. Precisely for the reason you mention "It works just fine for what these users need to do." Nobody needs the next version of Windows, nobody really cares, and Vista really isn't that great.Thing is at least if they want support for new hardware and security updates (and in our ever more networked world I would not want my main desktop OS to be one that was no longer getting security updates) they can't stay on XP forever.
Moving to linux isn't a cure for the upgrade treadmill. Look at ubuntu, the most popular desktop linux distro. They strugle to provide a 3 years of support on releases made every two years (that is only a single year of overlap). This makes the MS upgrade treadmill look postively gentle. I can't seem to easilly find information about rhel or OS-X but I don't think thier support lifecycles are anywhere near as long as micorsofts either.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Indeed, this is the case- and that's what most people, even the sharesellers, don't seem to get.
There's a set of specific obligations that a BoD and the Company Execs have to everything- sometimes it's to the shareholders, sometimes it's to the company. Some of the obligations end up overlapping, sometimes they're at odds and you have to actually consider the company, it's employees, etc. FIRST.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Office 2007 is actually very successful. Don't allow yourself to be manipulated by the Slashdot anti-Microsoft sentiments.
I also found the assertion of the GP hilarious. Do you interpret this graph as showing Microsoft's impending doom? If you do, you need glasses.
People seem to forget what a disaster HP/Compaq was, and what a money sink-hole AOL/TW was.
Yahoo has been known to do most of their web development on open platforms and languages. Microsoft's web services often come in third place. By purchasing Yahoo, you either allow Yahoo to remain Yahoo and abandon existing Microsoft services (never going to happen), or you force Yahoo's users into Microsoft services they didn't want (wasting what you just spent billions on), or you basically keep the two companies as seperate companies.
These two companies were not meant to be merged.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
What's Windows 2000 doing with a whopping 4.5%? I don't know. Maybe 4 to 5 out of every 100 computers still uses Windows 2000. Even more users of W3schools (yes, a site aimed at developers) used Windows 2000 at the same time as the graph was published.
XP isn't on the graph because more than 5% of people use it. I think.
Microsoft wasn't charged with abusing its monopoly because they only have a small portion of the market
You can search for other web statistics and they all pretty much match up. Welcome to the realisation that you've been misled by Slashdot.
If you are interested in discussing morals, ethics and "feelings", you should have kept the company private
Unmitigated nonsense, and typical of bottom feeders who want to rationalize their unethical behavior.
Making a company public does not mystically give the company directors or shareholders a free pass to act unethically.
Ethical and other rules apply to people regardless of whether they are participating in a company or not. Companies are just individuals cooperating to achieve common goals and if those individuals are acting ethically then the company is acting ethically also.
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Marketing talk is not just cheap, it has negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.
Yahoo shareholders that are angry are upset because they wanted a way to jump ship and make a boatload of money...pure greed.
You realize that these are the people who put up the money for the company...without whom, there would be no company. They're entitled to be greedy. It's their company.
Advice: on VPS providers
Without Jerry Yang, or thousands of Yahoo employees there'd be no Yahoo either. Do you not think they're also "entitled to be greedy" too? I think so. Also keep in mind that Icahn is leading this crusade. Icahn didn't "put up the money for the company" to help start and nurture and grow the company. Icahn set his "corporate raider bastard" target on Yahoo LONG after it came to prominence, and bought up millions of shares with the full intention of flipping them to MSFT.
Not only is Icahn NOT responsible for Yahoo's existence, it is full intention to END Yahoo's existence. That is his modus operandi: March into a public company using loads of capital and credit, start scheming to out all the directors and replace them with his cronies, start throwing the lawsuits around until he gets his way, then evicerate the company and sell off its guts to the highest bidder.
I don't have all that much love for Yahoo, but I'd have to say that my distaste for pushy, selfish corporate raiders exceeds whatever beef I've ever had with Yahoo, and even Microsoft.
I use Linux at home and I got to agree that he's living in a fantasy land. Linux has less than 1% of the desktop market last I saw. When at least 10% of the desktops sold have Linux on them, Ill start to believe in Microsoft's death. Hell, their nearest competition is Apple at some 7%
And at one time, Netscape had a monopoly on web browsers. Sure, it took all sorts of illegal actions on Microsoft's part to obliterate that monopoly, but 8-9 years ago, if you had said that another browser would start to seriously displace Internet Explorer, you'd be laughed out of the room.
Now Firefox/Mozilla/Netscape are gaining ground monthly - while still battling the "same old" (actions) from Microsoft. At the current rate, Internet Explorer will soon no longer be the browser holding majority marketshare.
What makes you think that Apple (gaining market share almost monthly) or Linux (slowly gaining market share for most of the months over the past 2 years) will not eventually reach the same point?
Here's the beauty of it that most people dont think of. For the most part (for the average user) a web browser is a web browser - if it works (and they all do - to at least the extent that the average user needs), then it doesnt matter too much which they use, so why not use the one that their tech/computer saavy friend/some site advertised to them? And in doing so, nothing has to be changed and nothing else needs to be written for it.
Now, when it comes to computers, Apple is beating the odds in that there are more things available for Windows... but for how much longer? The more market share Apple or Linux or whatever gets, the more stuff that will be written for it. That means less reasons not to switch (added to all of the many reasons cited on /. every day on why people should).
See the difference? Browser share gains are a relatively flat "curve" because of that... but soon, the OS curve will change from somewhat flat gain by non-Windows, to an actual curve (higher number of people switching each month) for whatever OS starts to truly compete with Windows, simply because as the percentage of users grows, the software to run on the OS will increase, fueling an even larger percentage per month to switch.
Other things that will help increase that uptake are things like the growing interest in OpenOffice and the growing defection from IE to Firefox or Safari.
Dont say it wont happen... it already is.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
Well, you know those hot chicks in school who said "no way I'd go out with you, not even for a billion dollars!"? Well, guess what they'd do for TWO billion dollars?
Well, if Jerry Yang and Yahoo really had a vision and really cared so much about achieving it, they wouldn't have sold their shares to a bunch of "capricious, money-grubbing, shareholders." Yahoo's decision to be a public traded company (a 19th Century development, not a 17th Century one), is one they made on their own because they need the money the equity markets provided to reach the status they hold now.
In fact, maybe Yahoo's original (pre-IPO) shareholders including Mr. Yang are the real greedy ones. After all, they obviously cared nothing about the company's long term prospects since they exposed it to the "horrors" of the publicly traded securities markets. It's clear they only cared about "cashing in" and monetizing the value of their Yahoo stock, Yahoo's actual company "be damned."
Just out of curiosity, what exactly to you propose replace the corporate entity in modern day business? Should we nationalize all major industry ala the U.K. in the 1960s and 70s and have the government be the only shareholder? Should we ban the concept of limited liability all together and only allow general partnerships (i.e., make each investor individually liable for the company's debts and obligations)?
The sun beams down on a brand new day, No more welfare tax to pay, Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light...
Stating that Linux and OS X are gaining market share doesn't make it true. I've provided two independent sources (a statistics firm and an open-source-centric developer site) that both contradict you; non-Microsoft OS are losing ground.
On the desktop, Windows Vista is competing with Windows XP, while Windows 2000 takes third place. OS X and Linux are nowhere. You're deluded.
Firefox has made impressive progress yes, but you've unwittingly spotted the problem for OS X and Linux; a browser is a browser, but they are nothing like Windows and the competing camps will never be interested in making their offerings more like Windows - and Ihttp://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=572679&cid=23645147#
Preview believe that's the only possible route to success.
Microsoft is doing just fine and dandy and I can't see that changing for another decade at least.