What's Good for Yahoo? Shareholders Have Already Decided

Yahoo! (YHOO) tried to have shareholders support in the face of a proxy battle with Carl Icahn (Regarding Your Comments on Yahoo! - The Icahn Report). Yahoo! explained why they rejected a $47.5 billion takeover offer by Microsoft (MSFT).

Yahoo now hopes to gain much from a planned advertising partnership with Google Inc (GOOG). Investors will make a decision in a vote scheduled on August 1 at the company's annual meeting. Shares on Monday plunged more than 3%.
You can see the presentation to stockholders at the SEC website: at the SEC website.

In the document, the company questioned the real intentions of Microsoft about a full-scale merger and said that the offer undervalued Yahoo! In summary, they stated that "the record casts doubt on whether Microsoft was ever committed to a whole company acquisition." Yahoo continued to insist the subsequent Microsoft offer for the search asset was a bad deal for stockholders, while the agreement with Google enhances Yahoo!'s strategic plan. They concluded giving the message that the Icahn slate is not the right answer for the company.

I am not sure I have all the information to say what is good or bad for Yahoo! as a company. I can only observe, however, that on January 31 Microsoft offered to acquire Yahoo! at $31 per share, later raised to $33. Yesterday, Yahoo! closed the trading session at $20.66. That is more than 50% difference. In the future, we will see what the stretegic plan of Yahoo! can manage to accomplish. For now, the market has already decided what was good for its stockholders.

Disclosure: None

Comments

[Rik:]

Icahn will get my proxy. Yang and the board must be smoking pot.

2008 Jul 01 12:05 PM

[Jonha's Pop:]

Get rid of the 'Ying & the Yang'.

2008 Jul 02 10:47 AM