stockholders, turning down the offer really was a bad choice; I don't see Yahoo making such big gains on their own any time soon.
Form the point of view of the stockholders I think rejecting the offer was a good choice. If MS really wants to buy Yahoo! they will offer a higher price, why go with a low price if you can get a higher one? Or looking at it the other way, why offer a high price if a lower one might be accepted? Go to a bazaar and buyers and sellers will haggle over the price of something.
I am probably a minority here, but as a yahoo shareholder, I for one support the merger. From a stock holder's perspective -- this is the only way
One of Yahoo!'s largest stockholders wants Yahoo! to accept the offer, but only if MS raising the offer. In the belief that if MS really wants Yahoo! they'd first make a low ball offer, I'd expect Yahoo! to reject it. Much like when you go to a bazaar, buyers and sellers usually haggle over the price.
I am convinced that the board and management have no clue what they are doing, and clearly at the very least is ambivalent toward their shareholders. I'd go so far as to venture that Yahoo's board has contempt for them.
So, the board has contempt for itself? Or didn't you know they own stocks in the company?
If I were a Yahoo shareholder, I'd be excited to be able to convert that into Microsoft stock. To have someone deny me that chance based on a childish rivalry would really upset me.
If I were a Yahoo! stockholder, to make me convert my stock to MS stock is what's childish. Especially when the first offer of a buyout is usually low. A business usually offers a low price the first offer then will raise it.
if the shareholders can make a valid argument that the company is not acting in the best long-term interest of the shareholders, which incidentally seems a quite valid argument in this case, then they have completely valid grounds to sue.
Actually it was fiducially responsible for the board to turn down MS's offer. Usually the first offer to buy something is low and by turning it down the potential buyer, if it's serious, will make a higher offer.
There are two reasons I switched from Windows and an additional reason I went to OS X. I was sick and tired of my Windows PCs crashing, yes even XP. The very first tyme I booted up an XP PC it froze while booting up, and it was a brand new Dell. And since XP Microsoft has required Activation and all the spyware such as WGA. There were two usable choices when switching, Linux and OX S. As I wanted a laptop with the biggest LCD I could afford and I wanted the ability to run Photoshop CS3 I chose a MacBook Pro.
I did, once Apple released G5 Macs I waited for years and years Apple to release a G5 laptop. I was glad when they finally switched to Intel's but I would of liked it if AMDs were also compatible.
No, not every has geed, has an "excessive desire to acquire or possess more (especially more material wealth) than one needs or deserves" or is greedy, is "ardently or excessively desirous".
the managers may feel that they want to take Yahoo in a certain direction not dictated by microsoft, and that is all well and good, but it sounds less noble when you realize that the money they are using to do that is not theirs. It is the money of the tens of thousands of investors in their company that has allowed them to do this.
However those managers are also investors, ie they also own Yahoo! stock.
There is no retirement fund in the world that should be invested in Yahoo.
Actually all investing people do should be for retirement. When young investments should be for growth then when nearing and at retirement it should be for income.
it took so long. Yahoo has been on the ropes for the last few years and then to deny a golden parachute to the shareholders is just pure pig headed stupidity.
What's pig headed is accepting the first offer when usually later offers offer a higher price.
My former boss would be interested to know that his company isn't governed by the laws of Missouri, and I think some Nevada casino owners are giggling at this point too.
Corporations can be incorporated in any state however as GP said Delaware is a friendly state for corporations.
If you are going to talk financial, then please talk about valuation and not share price. The reality is that the valuation of Yahoo has gone down because the earnings has gone down.
If you're going to talk then talk about what stockholders want, Yahoo!'s largest stockholder say Yahoo! must accept the offer "if Microsoft raises the price". The fact that management rejected the first offer is good, if MS is serious about acquiring Yahoo! then they will offer more.
I thought the accepted method for shareholders to get the company to do what they want was to replace the board and then the upper management, rather than suing.
That is supposed to be how it's done, but these funds don't own enough stock so they can't force their way.
If Yahoo were to ultimately reject the offer and Microsoft would back down, you'd probably see Yahoo's stock price drop to a level even lower than it was at the time the offer was made as many investors will probably write the company off as a lost cause.
However if Microsoft is serious in it's offer to acquire Yahoo! then when the offer was rejected MS would counter it with a higher offer. By accepting the first offer Yahoo!'s management would be foregoing a higher offer. For this reason if I owned a lot of Yahoo! stock and they had accepted the offer I may very well sue them for not fulfilling their fiducial responsibility to maximize return.
As I said here, it's the shareholders who have the final say on this deal
Yes, and if I were a stockholder I'd reject the first offer which is usually a low ball as the acquirer wants to pay as little as possible.
I admit I may be mistaken here but I was always convinced that the purpose of shares existing in the first place was to have a possibility of shared ownership for many indihviduals.
It's understandable but you're wrong. The original purpose of issuing shares in a corporation, and the purpose of the corporation itself, was to limit liability. Corporate Charters were first issued to limit the liability of investors to just what they invested in the corporation. The first two corporate charters were granted to the Dutch East India Company in 1602 and the Honourable East India Company in 1604. Both were trading companies involved in shipping products between India and Europe and shipping was an expensive operation. If a ship sank or was attacked by pirates not only did the owners lose the ship but they also had to pay for the loss of the cargo and the loss of the lives. If a small investor had invested money in a ship they could lose everything they owned, even their own home. The Dutch then the British granted charters to corporations to limit the liability of small investors. If a ship was lost the most an investor could lose is the amount of money they invested. However what has been overlooked in all of this was that corporate charters were originally granted if and only if the corporation served the Common good or Public good and when a corporation no longer served these it's charter could be revoked.
I had a friend whose macbook refused to boot and when she called apple's support line, you guessed it India again.
All I'd call Apple for is to schedule an appointment for the Genius Bar. I didn't even do that the one tyme I had trouble, I just went down the an Apple store and talked to a genius. He said they were busy there all day but looked online to see if other locations had an open slot. Another store had a slot open a coupe of hours later and he reserved it for me.
The reality is that the board is overstepping their boundaries and they are doing things that are not in the interest of the Yahoo shareholders.
BS! Now you're making things up. If I were a stockholder of Yahoo! and the board had taken MS's offer I may have sued them because in not demanding a higher price they would have shrugged off their fiducial responsibility to get as good a price as they could. As typically happens an acquirer usually raises their offer when the first offer fails.
Lovely, some short term investors would liek to crack open the golden goose and get allt he eggs now. Which may not be a bad idea (I can't imagine Yahoo!'s share price going up very significantly unless they have something very surprising in the works. If I was a shareholder I'd probably want to sue them too, but I'd feel dirty about it (but rolling around in money would probably cure that).
I think this lawsuit is wrong. If I were a Yahoo! stockholder and management had taken the offer I'd sue for breach of fiducial responsibility for not demanding a higher price.
Hence why I said "low level tech support." Those jobs can and are shipped overseas all the time, call dell or hp sometime.
I've never had a Dell and though I have an HP when I got it I got it at Bestbuy and got their extended service plan as well, so when I had trouble with my HP I took it back to Bestbuy. Now I have a MacBook Pro, I'm typing this on it, and when I have trouble I can just take it to an Apple store and have a genius look at it.
I think it's an act of faith that expansion of the communications system will lead to jobs
That's the problem, some take it as an act of faith jobs will be created. While I want broadband to be widely available I don't want people to be misled. US cableco and telco businesses have already been paid 100s of billions of taxpayer dollars to buildout but they haven't, as far as I'm concerned something like this is just another attempt to grab more taxpayer money.
Among other things, several studies point to about a 1% increase in business formation and job growth rates. Haven't done a compare and contrast with this study, but it doesn't seem out of line.
However neither this study nor TFA say what businesses and jobs will to created.
Oh, and as far as the Government costs of delivering broadband, recall that the deal was cut with the telcos to put that mojo all over the place in the mid 90s. Didn't happen, and the score keeping is rigged by measuring "success" at the 5 digit zip code level.
Yeap, the cablecos and telcos were paid billions of US taxpayer dollars to build out but they didn't.
It seems obvious to me that if you some rural location with a low cost of living was wired it could allow those areas to be more competitive with outsourcing overseas or south of the border.
Most of those jobs don't pay much though, and they don't create new jobs. At most they bring back jobs that were outsourced to begin with. Like what Dell did. At first Dell sent support to India but ended up relocating support to Carolina, I don't recall whether North or South. Outsourcing to India didn't really work for them.
And then there are the entrepreneurs that we dont know about...
And all the unknown jobs. However seeing as how TFA was about new jobs it would of been nice if they had said somethng about what sort of jobs they would be.
There is distance learning which would help educate those in more rural areas who cannot reach a community college.
Some people find distance learning helpful but others need someone physically present. I learned this a long tyme ago when I used to tutor. Since then I relearned, because of an injury I survived, yes survived as I wasn't expected to live, that. After struggling in classes I realized I needed that person aid. Heck, after my injury for a while I had an ILS, Independent Living Skills, nurse help me.
Yet we don't have the infrastructure to do it. And based on a a lot of the comments here on Slashdot there is not the appreciation or the willpower to do it. Probably because most of you posting already have your fast connection. If just those digital 'have nots' would pull themselves up by their tin can straps...
I don't know where this comes from. Other/.ers have, as I have myself, railed against Cablecos and Telcos for not expanding, building out, the infrastructure for broadband. And yet they have already been paid billions of dollars to do so. There's the "$200 Billion Broadband Scandal", "Pennsylvania Broadband Fraud", and "You've Already Paid $2,000 For A Fiber Connection You'll Never Get". And those are from the still good bookmarks I have. Googling/. for broadband cableco OR telco" returns 1250 results. Admittedly not all are where/.ers complain about broadband not being rolled out but a good percentage should be. I don't recall how many tymes, but it's been a bunch, I've posted about the Broadband Utopia in northeastern Utah and have said that though I consider myself libertarian I like that the infrastructure here is owned by the communities involved, who then allow anyone to use it to provide any services it can deliver, and not some for profit monopoly. However it doesn't have to be owned by government as in this case, actually I'd rather it be owned by a coop.
Slashdot Mirror
stockholders, turning down the offer really was a bad choice; I don't see Yahoo making such big gains on their own any time soon.
Form the point of view of the stockholders I think rejecting the offer was a good choice. If MS really wants to buy Yahoo! they will offer a higher price, why go with a low price if you can get a higher one? Or looking at it the other way, why offer a high price if a lower one might be accepted? Go to a bazaar and buyers and sellers will haggle over the price of something.
FalconBuild a product get people to invest.. Good they invested... quick pull it all out....
Except in this case it's those who founded the company that want to keep it independent and not pull out.
FalconI am probably a minority here, but as a yahoo shareholder, I for one support the merger. From a stock holder's perspective -- this is the only way
One of Yahoo!'s largest stockholders wants Yahoo! to accept the offer, but only if MS raising the offer. In the belief that if MS really wants Yahoo! they'd first make a low ball offer, I'd expect Yahoo! to reject it. Much like when you go to a bazaar, buyers and sellers usually haggle over the price.
FalconYahoo is being sued by its shareholders.
Yahoo is being sued by it's shareholders.
FalconI am convinced that the board and management have no clue what they are doing, and clearly at the very least is ambivalent toward their shareholders. I'd go so far as to venture that Yahoo's board has contempt for them.
So, the board has contempt for itself? Or didn't you know they own stocks in the company?
FalconIf I were a Yahoo shareholder, I'd be excited to be able to convert that into Microsoft stock. To have someone deny me that chance based on a childish rivalry would really upset me.
If I were a Yahoo! stockholder, to make me convert my stock to MS stock is what's childish. Especially when the first offer of a buyout is usually low. A business usually offers a low price the first offer then will raise it.
Falconif the shareholders can make a valid argument that the company is not acting in the best long-term interest of the shareholders, which incidentally seems a quite valid argument in this case, then they have completely valid grounds to sue.
Actually it was fiducially responsible for the board to turn down MS's offer. Usually the first offer to buy something is low and by turning it down the potential buyer, if it's serious, will make a higher offer.
FalconThere are two reasons I switched from Windows and an additional reason I went to OS X. I was sick and tired of my Windows PCs crashing, yes even XP. The very first tyme I booted up an XP PC it froze while booting up, and it was a brand new Dell. And since XP Microsoft has required Activation and all the spyware such as WGA. There were two usable choices when switching, Linux and OX S. As I wanted a laptop with the biggest LCD I could afford and I wanted the ability to run Photoshop CS3 I chose a MacBook Pro.
FalconiNTEL processor.
I did, once Apple released G5 Macs I waited for years and years Apple to release a G5 laptop. I was glad when they finally switched to Intel's but I would of liked it if AMDs were also compatible.
FalconNo, not every has geed, has an "excessive desire to acquire or possess more (especially more material wealth) than one needs or deserves" or is greedy, is "ardently or excessively desirous".
the managers may feel that they want to take Yahoo in a certain direction not dictated by microsoft, and that is all well and good, but it sounds less noble when you realize that the money they are using to do that is not theirs. It is the money of the tens of thousands of investors in their company that has allowed them to do this.
However those managers are also investors, ie they also own Yahoo! stock.
FalconThere is no retirement fund in the world that should be invested in Yahoo.
Actually all investing people do should be for retirement. When young investments should be for growth then when nearing and at retirement it should be for income.
Falconit took so long. Yahoo has been on the ropes for the last few years and then to deny a golden parachute to the shareholders is just pure pig headed stupidity.
What's pig headed is accepting the first offer when usually later offers offer a higher price.
FalconMy former boss would be interested to know that his company isn't governed by the laws of Missouri, and I think some Nevada casino owners are giggling at this point too.
Corporations can be incorporated in any state however as GP said Delaware is a friendly state for corporations.
FalconSince when have pension funds been considered short term investors?
By not allowing Yahoo! to get the best deal they can that's exactly how these funds are acting.
FalconIf you are going to talk financial, then please talk about valuation and not share price. The reality is that the valuation of Yahoo has gone down because the earnings has gone down.
If you're going to talk then talk about what stockholders want, Yahoo!'s largest stockholder say Yahoo! must accept the offer "if Microsoft raises the price". The fact that management rejected the first offer is good, if MS is serious about acquiring Yahoo! then they will offer more.
FalconI thought the accepted method for shareholders to get the company to do what they want was to replace the board and then the upper management, rather than suing.
That is supposed to be how it's done, but these funds don't own enough stock so they can't force their way.
FalconIf Yahoo were to ultimately reject the offer and Microsoft would back down, you'd probably see Yahoo's stock price drop to a level even lower than it was at the time the offer was made as many investors will probably write the company off as a lost cause.
However if Microsoft is serious in it's offer to acquire Yahoo! then when the offer was rejected MS would counter it with a higher offer. By accepting the first offer Yahoo!'s management would be foregoing a higher offer. For this reason if I owned a lot of Yahoo! stock and they had accepted the offer I may very well sue them for not fulfilling their fiducial responsibility to maximize return.
As I said here, it's the shareholders who have the final say on this deal
Yes, and if I were a stockholder I'd reject the first offer which is usually a low ball as the acquirer wants to pay as little as possible.
FalconI admit I may be mistaken here but I was always convinced that the purpose of shares existing in the first place was to have a possibility of shared ownership for many indihviduals.
It's understandable but you're wrong. The original purpose of issuing shares in a corporation, and the purpose of the corporation itself, was to limit liability. Corporate Charters were first issued to limit the liability of investors to just what they invested in the corporation. The first two corporate charters were granted to the Dutch East India Company in 1602 and the Honourable East India Company in 1604. Both were trading companies involved in shipping products between India and Europe and shipping was an expensive operation. If a ship sank or was attacked by pirates not only did the owners lose the ship but they also had to pay for the loss of the cargo and the loss of the lives. If a small investor had invested money in a ship they could lose everything they owned, even their own home. The Dutch then the British granted charters to corporations to limit the liability of small investors. If a ship was lost the most an investor could lose is the amount of money they invested. However what has been overlooked in all of this was that corporate charters were originally granted if and only if the corporation served the Common good or Public good and when a corporation no longer served these it's charter could be revoked.
FalconI had a friend whose macbook refused to boot and when she called apple's support line, you guessed it India again.
All I'd call Apple for is to schedule an appointment for the Genius Bar. I didn't even do that the one tyme I had trouble, I just went down the an Apple store and talked to a genius. He said they were busy there all day but looked online to see if other locations had an open slot. Another store had a slot open a coupe of hours later and he reserved it for me.
FalconThe reality is that the board is overstepping their boundaries and they are doing things that are not in the interest of the Yahoo shareholders.
BS! Now you're making things up. If I were a stockholder of Yahoo! and the board had taken MS's offer I may have sued them because in not demanding a higher price they would have shrugged off their fiducial responsibility to get as good a price as they could. As typically happens an acquirer usually raises their offer when the first offer fails.
FalconLovely, some short term investors would liek to crack open the golden goose and get allt he eggs now. Which may not be a bad idea (I can't imagine Yahoo!'s share price going up very significantly unless they have something very surprising in the works. If I was a shareholder I'd probably want to sue them too, but I'd feel dirty about it (but rolling around in money would probably cure that).
I think this lawsuit is wrong. If I were a Yahoo! stockholder and management had taken the offer I'd sue for breach of fiducial responsibility for not demanding a higher price.
FalconHence why I said "low level tech support." Those jobs can and are shipped overseas all the time, call dell or hp sometime.
I've never had a Dell and though I have an HP when I got it I got it at Bestbuy and got their extended service plan as well, so when I had trouble with my HP I took it back to Bestbuy. Now I have a MacBook Pro, I'm typing this on it, and when I have trouble I can just take it to an Apple store and have a genius look at it.
FalconI think it's an act of faith that expansion of the communications system will lead to jobs
That's the problem, some take it as an act of faith jobs will be created. While I want broadband to be widely available I don't want people to be misled. US cableco and telco businesses have already been paid 100s of billions of taxpayer dollars to buildout but they haven't, as far as I'm concerned something like this is just another attempt to grab more taxpayer money.
FalconAmong other things, several studies point to about a 1% increase in business formation and job growth rates. Haven't done a compare and contrast with this study, but it doesn't seem out of line.
However neither this study nor TFA say what businesses and jobs will to created.
Lake County, Florida, http://www.freepress.net/docs/broadband_and_economic_development_aes.pdf/ is the poster child for these studies, but a broader analysis is available from http://www.eda.gov/PDF/MITCMUBBImpactReport.pdf/.
Page(s) not found.
Oh, and as far as the Government costs of delivering broadband, recall that the deal was cut with the telcos to put that mojo all over the place in the mid 90s. Didn't happen, and the score keeping is rigged by measuring "success" at the 5 digit zip code level.
Yeap, the cablecos and telcos were paid billions of US taxpayer dollars to build out but they didn't.
FalconIt seems obvious to me that if you some rural location with a low cost of living was wired it could allow those areas to be more competitive with outsourcing overseas or south of the border.
Most of those jobs don't pay much though, and they don't create new jobs. At most they bring back jobs that were outsourced to begin with. Like what Dell did. At first Dell sent support to India but ended up relocating support to Carolina, I don't recall whether North or South. Outsourcing to India didn't really work for them.
And then there are the entrepreneurs that we dont know about...
And all the unknown jobs. However seeing as how TFA was about new jobs it would of been nice if they had said somethng about what sort of jobs they would be.
There is distance learning which would help educate those in more rural areas who cannot reach a community college.
Some people find distance learning helpful but others need someone physically present. I learned this a long tyme ago when I used to tutor. Since then I relearned, because of an injury I survived, yes survived as I wasn't expected to live, that. After struggling in classes I realized I needed that person aid. Heck, after my injury for a while I had an ILS, Independent Living Skills, nurse help me.
Yet we don't have the infrastructure to do it. And based on a a lot of the comments here on Slashdot there is not the appreciation or the willpower to do it. Probably because most of you posting already have your fast connection. If just those digital 'have nots' would pull themselves up by their tin can straps...
I don't know where this comes from. Other /.ers have, as I have myself, railed against Cablecos and Telcos for not expanding, building out, the infrastructure for broadband. And yet they have already been paid billions of dollars to do so. There's the "$200 Billion Broadband Scandal", "Pennsylvania Broadband Fraud", and "You've Already Paid $2,000 For A Fiber Connection You'll Never Get". And those are from the still good bookmarks I have. Googling /. for broadband cableco OR telco" returns 1250 results. Admittedly not all are where /.ers complain about broadband not being rolled out but a good percentage should be. I don't recall how many tymes, but it's been a bunch, I've posted about the Broadband Utopia in northeastern Utah and have said that though I consider myself libertarian I like that the infrastructure here is owned by the communities involved, who then allow anyone to use it to provide any services it can deliver, and not some for profit monopoly. However it doesn't have to be owned by government as in this case, actually I'd rather it be owned by a coop.
Falcon