The ongoing saga of the botched acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft is so old and overdone that even the blogosphere is tired of stating opinions on it. The Yahoo brain trust has fled. Yahoo shareholders must simply be planning on writing off the stock, unless a miracle happens. But for those of us who like the exciting back-and-forth of the epic tennis match, and who are suffering some post-Wimbledon depression (a nearly five hour men's final!), we bring you the latest go-round between Yahoo, Microsoft and Carl Icahn from the weekend.
(This is also one of those rare deals that always seems to release its news over the weekend. That's an investor relations strategy to avoid affecting stock prices. But in this case, can't say stock prices are not being affected -- and in Yahoo's case, really hurt.)
On Saturday, Yahoo sent this statement: Yahoo! Rejects Microsoft/Icahn Search and Restructuring Proposal. You can guess from the headline what it covers. But to give it to you in a tiny summary, it says that Microsoft and Carl Icahn yet again approached Yahoo to sell its search business to Microsoft and for a list of reasons, Yahoo's board said no.
Here’s Microsoft’s take on what happened with Yahoo and Icahn, which, of course, does not match the story coming out of Yahoo’s board. The summary is that Yahoo's board asked Microsoft to come up with another proposal, which Microsoft did -- one in which, Microsoft says, was a bigger, better deal than its last offer. It disputes the the offer included the odd provisions that Yahoo supposedly rejected, such as insistence that the remaining bits of Yahoo be governed by Icahn's board.
And here is the story from Carl Icahn. He says it best in his own words: "Over the years I have attempted to make changes at many companies but I have yet to see a company distort, omit and twist events and facts in the manner that Yahoo! has done in their press release issued Saturday night, July 12th."
It seems clear that Steve Ballmer has a lot better things to do than waste more time with the current Yahoo board.
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