Microhoo! what's! going! on?
Possible announcement likely maybe today
Steps to Take Before Choosing a Business Continuity Partner
Microsoft is laying aside $1.5bn to keep Yahoo! staff happy and at their desks should the takeover go through.
The cash was revealed in court documents from last month. The figure comes from a transcript of a hearing held on 24 March (available here). But lawyers noted that the figure for staff retention could also include the costs of lay-offs.
The class action case is being brought against Yahoo! by two Detroit public pension funds. It calls on Yahoo!'s board to accept Microsoft's offer.
Microsoft has gone out of its way to reassure Yahoo! staff that a takeover would not mean substantial job cuts.
In February, it published an email which said: "People are the single most important asset in this combination... There's no question we will dedicate significant rewards and compensation to Yahoo! and Microsoft employees."
Although the email ceded there may be some overlap, it said Microsoft had hired 20,000 people since 2005. Johnson also said Microsoft would keep Yahoo!'s Silicon Valley campus which is home to 10,000 Yahoo! employees.
The deadline for Yahoo! to accept Microsoft's offer passed at the weekend, but there has been no word from either side since. Ballmer was threatening to launch a proxy battle - to ask shareholders to approve his own nominees for the board who would then vote in favour of the takeover. Some blogs are predicting an announcement could come later today.
Yahoo! has not announced when its annual shareholder meeting will be held. Last month Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang said it was extending the deadline for naming board appointees to 10 days after it announces the date of the meeting. This stopped Microsoft naming its nominees.
It continues to insist the offer substantially undervalues the firm and is looking for alternatives. ®
COMMENTS
YAHMIC!
Microhoo has been an unlucky name for these two giant companies.
YAHMIC! is the newest name full of goodluck that will surely make this merger work.
YAHMIC! YAHOO and Microsoft.
Go YAHMIC!, Go Go YAHMIC!
Need more Competition!!! (Gotta have more cowbell)
@ Michael
Yahoo stock looks like it is at the same place as 6 months ago (before any M$ rumors I believe)
Sure there is a nice spike there on the news of buyout, but you are missing the bigger picture that not everyone invests in a company for todays value. I would argue that the majority, or certainly the most important investors in a company are those that buy and hold for the long term value for retirement. Yahoo at $26 today could be worth $2600 (and then adjusted for inflation of course) by 2020. A little lofty I suppose, but look at googles stock and see what expectations can get you in real dollars. Yahoo is one of 3 major internet protals (search, email, news etc) you don't think that this has long term value???
Also M$ is not considering hostile takeover, its a hostile bid, they are trying to force out the board, to replace them with one that will sell. Investors are daft to do this, that like letting a person replace your minister so you can get more money for selling the church - only a good deal if you don't care about the value of the church.
In a hostile takeover, they start forcing buys at $33, then people hold out, price goes up and M$ ends up paying more than $40 anywyas. Not to mention I am pretty sure the 80's showed that hostile take overs are completly unprofitable (unless they yeild a market monopoly)....
@ Grundy
People wont not buy windows XP because of bill gates, but people like myself will close down a yahoo account and open a google one just because they don't trust M$ as a corporation to own their data.
And Yahoo seems pretty good and making a profit, they are just also smart enough to invest proceeds into development.
If they sucked, then M$ would not be offering $40 Bil for the company people...
I am very personally against the merger because I don't like the way google thinks all my personal data belongs to them for the purpose of advertising? And where am I to take my accounts if M$ buys yahoo?
Good Grief, all these companies out there, the whole .com boom, and we are going to be stuck with M$ or Google as our choice of portals for news and Email.... I remember 10 years ago when I had more than 20 options.
Reccomendations anyone? I think I still have a myrealbox account..:)
@ Tim Bates
Who actually stops doing business with a company because of it's owners? A few hardcore's certainly but hardcore's generally have little to no impact on a company's financial status. One would argue that those are the customers you don't want because they are whiners and eat up customer service time.
Microsoft makes money. Yahoo! doesn't do so well at that. If the acquisition happened and MS killed off a bunch of services it's probably because they are pointless and generate no profit.
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
What you need to know about cloud backup
Enabling efficient data center monitoring
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Top 10 SIEM implementer’s checklist
