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Yahoo Spent $79 Million To Fend Off Microsoft
Apologetics Blog writes "Getting bought by one of the biggest companies in the world turns out to be a rather costly thing. Last year when Microsoft was in talks with Yahoo regarding a possible buy-out, in a report recently filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Yahoo announced that it cost them $79 million to fight off Microsoft. Most of that money was spent on advisors who examined Microsoft's proposals, and the way it would impact on Yahoo's search agreement with Google. The deal fizzled out when federal antitrust regulators said it would challenge any deal made between the two companies."
Shows that consultants win, as they so often (always?) do
Getting bought by one of the biggest companies in the world turns out to be a rather costly thing.
That should read "Not getting bought out..." since the deal never went through. If they had only just given in to Microsoft... then all it would have cost them is their souls.
The google/yahoo deal was an advertising agreement, not a merger/acquisition.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
here is the link to the atricle that actually talks about the $79 Million dollar tab, with all sorts of links to all the related article stuff...
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10184454-93.html?tag=mncol;posts
1.) Immediately investigate Jerry Yang's connection with the "advisors".
2.) Ensure that the current CEO understands that any future "advisment" of this nature will come out of her pension.
That's $215K per day for a whole year !
Do you expect me to believe that the 100 top flight lawyers and accountants were working every day of the year on this ? Or did they just hire Accenture ?
When our company took over a company worth £43mill it cost us £1mill in legal fees etc. etc. to get everything looked over and sorted out.
I think for something of Yahoo's worth, $79 million isn't massively unrealistic. I'd say it's not unreasonable either, it is to most people including me, but in the world of business I'd say it's probably not.
Still Yahoo, perhaps the most business plan challenged IT company in the last few years, turning down Micrososft, going for Google, getting told to f off by Google because of the potential for monopoly problems and then running back to Microsoft and being told to f off by Micrososft too.
Ballmer is probably laughing his arse off, they offered over the odds to pay for the company but if they had paid that much and then seen the resulting decline of it's worth due to a number of factors from Google to the financial crisis then they'd have wasted literally billions.
I don't know if I'd call it genius or underhanded (people jumped all over Sony for doing something similar with that one import company...) but use the legal system and costs associated with it to drive your competition out of business.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Actually, compared to Microsoft's flailing in search, Yahoo are a pretty solid number two.
Hang on, let me rephrase that.
Microsoft has been greedily eyeing up Yahoo's number two slot.
Oh, forget it.
The way I read it, there's a lot of fees rolled into one.
Some of you may ask why so many lawyers. Well there a 3 separate legal issues here. Fight MS, Deal with Google, and fight Carl Icahn. You might get the same lawyers to fight MS and figure out the Google deal, but they really are different areas of the law and the large scope would mean you need more more bodies. For the proxy contest, you probably want a law firm that specializes in that.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I'm sorry but HAHAHAHAHAHA! Did you say MSFT overtakes them? Have you TRIED MSFT Search? Hell it was shit 10 years ago and it is shit+ extra stink now. The searches are total crap and most of what you find is simply crap trying to sell you junk that has NOTHING to do with what you are looking for.
I'm talking about the odds of success which strange as it may seem have little to do with the quality of Microsoft search. I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy but if you look at it objectively I think it was a bad deal for Yahoo's shareholders when management rejected Microsoft's offer. Microsoft offered $33/share, which was more than they've been valued since 2006 (and only for a brief time in 2006 at that).
Do you honesty see Yahoo crawling back up to $33/share on their own with either their current product portfolio or anything they have on the drawing board? I hear a lot of people bashing Microsoft but I don't hear too many people defending Yahoo. I still say I would have been pretty pissed if I was a Yahoo shareholder.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Actually, I sincerely doubt the MS offer was done in good faith.
Had the MS bid gone forward, MS would have access to a whole lot of Y! internal data, research, plans and so on. If they later retired their offer as they considered the companies were never really a good match, MS would have walked away with a lot of inside knowledge about its biggest competitor in the search market and Yahoo would have gotten nothing but a lot of FUD and a probably mortal wound.
This would be a lot less expensive than buying Yahoo! would be in the first place and Yahoo would be every bit as gone as #2 as if they were bought.
This kind of maneuver is so typical of Microsoft I cannot imagine any other explanation.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Microsoft is the worlds 136th largest company
> The deal fizzled out when federal antitrust regulators said it would challenge any deal made between the two companies. The way I understand it, the deal actually fizzled out because some Yahoo C-level egos couldn't agree on a valuation with Microsoft. Yahoo, whose stock currently trades for $12.60, wouldn't sell to MS for $33 / share because they felt they were worth $37 / share, and also because they are idiots. Slashdot actually covered this story at the time.