Slashdot Mirror
Yahoo To Spin Off Everything That Makes It Yahoo (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Yahoo has confirmed reports from last week by saying it plans to spin off all of its assets aside from its $31 billion stake in Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba. "In the reverse spin off, Yahoo's assets and liabilities other than the Alibaba stake would be transferred to a newly formed company, the stock of which would be distributed pro rata to Yahoo shareholders resulting in two separate publicly-traded companies." Their decision was spurred by how stock market traders were weighing the tax risk of spinning off the most valuable part of the company.
The article notes that this probably means trouble for CEO Marissa Mayer: "Ms. Mayer, who was hired in 2012 to turn around Yahoo, had planned to spin off the company's 15 percent stake in Alibaba, bundled with a small-business services unit, into a new company called Aabaco. She then planned to focus on improving the company's core business, the sale of advertising that is shown to the roughly one billion users of Yahoo's apps and websites. Ms. Mayer is now effectively back to square one. Yahoo's core Internet operations are struggling, even though the chief executive has made dozens of acquisitions, added original video and magazine-style content, and released new apps."
The article notes that this probably means trouble for CEO Marissa Mayer: "Ms. Mayer, who was hired in 2012 to turn around Yahoo, had planned to spin off the company's 15 percent stake in Alibaba, bundled with a small-business services unit, into a new company called Aabaco. She then planned to focus on improving the company's core business, the sale of advertising that is shown to the roughly one billion users of Yahoo's apps and websites. Ms. Mayer is now effectively back to square one. Yahoo's core Internet operations are struggling, even though the chief executive has made dozens of acquisitions, added original video and magazine-style content, and released new apps."
That would be a great theory if, post-1999, Yahoo actually had the ability to threaten Google in any way.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Yahoo was already dying. Nobody needed to do anything to drive it into the ground. For years people have been saying the best thing about Yahoo is that it owns a chunk of another company. I think Marissa Meyer was probably looking at no possibility of taking the helm at Google, through no fault of her own, so looked elsewhere. She got a chance to try to turn it around and a pile of money if it didn't work. I don't think we need a conspiracy to explain it.
The reason this is being done is that Yahoo couldn't get a promise from the IRS that selling off Alibaba shares wouldn't be tax free. So they are doing this game of making the current company a holding company for the Alibaba shares, then putting the rest of the company in a "new" company. This is just tax avoidance, nothing more.
Welcome to the world of CEOs, where competence and results have nothing at all to do with how much damned money you get paid.
I don't think she's a plant, I think Yahoo was a company which was far too screwed to readily turn itself around, and they've utterly failed to do it.
Inability of a CEO to turn around a company which has been floundering and lurching around for years doesn't necessitate a conspiracy. I think it points to the fact that people act like CEOs have any actual idea of what they're doing.
I mean, I can incompetently manage Yahoo for half the money.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Marissa's salary at Yahoo (wages, options, and bonuses):
2014: $42 million
2013: $25 million
2012: $36 million
And I'm sure she'll be getting a nice parachute as well. That's pretty steep compensation for a company that has performed so poorly.
Meanwhile employees had their remote-work privileges revoked, allowing them to watch this slow-motion trainwreck of a CEO up close. And employees were recently asked by Mayer to reup for a long-term commitment to the company. Where does this leave all of them?
Let's not put the female part into it. What I see is a typical worker who goes through the motions of the right university degrees, the right employer, the right talk, but also a person who has never run a company before, let alone start one, or display any great vision. It was a completely random appointment of an unproven person. They risked their multi-billion company on that. Idiots.
He is right. Marissa was Larry's girlfriend at Google. You didn't know that I guess. Did you think she rose to the top at Google because she was brilliant?
Is paranoia and misogyny all that Slashdot has to offer these days?
Nope. We got spelling errors. Grammar issues. Non sequitors and logical fallacies up the wazoo.
Not to mention ad hominen attacks.
We're quite well rounded, actually.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!