Forget It Ballmer Says To Yahoo Forbes

Forget It Ballmer Says To Yahoo Forbes.com Home Business Tech Markets Entrepreneurs Leadership Personal Finance ForbesLife Lists Opinions Video Blogs E mail Newsletters People Tracker Portfolio Tracker Special Reports Commerce Energy Health Care Logistics Manufacturing Media Services Technology Wall Street Washington CIO Network Enterprise Tech Infoimaging Internet Infrastructure Internet Personal Tech Sciences Security Wireless Bonds Commodities Currencies Economy Emerging Markets Equities Options Finance Human Resources Law E Mail Print Request Reprints E Mail Newsletters RSS The Yahoo Deal Forget It Ballmer Says To Yahoo Elizabeth Corcoran . . PM ET Burlingame Calif. Jerry Yang got his way. Now he ll have to prove it was worth the fight. Microsoft nasdaq MSFT news people Chief Executive Steve Ballmer sent a note to Yang of Yahoo nasdaq YHOO news people Saturday calling off his pursuit of the Internet company. The two companies simply couldn t agree on a price Ballmer said! . Read the full text of Ballmer s letter here. In the past week Microsoft sweetened its bid from the original level of a share to . It still wasn t enough. In his letter Ballmer wrote . your final position insisted on Microsoft paying yet another billion or more or at least another per share above our offer. And that made the deal just too expensive Ballmer deemed. It wasn t that Microsoft couldn t afford a few extra dollars. But Ballmer who had been surveying some of Microsoft s largest institutional shareholders had gotten a strong message from investors Raise the price too much and Ballmer jeopardized Microsoft s own share price. Since Ballmer first made his bid for Yahoo Feb. Microsoft s share price had declined by to close at . Friday. By contrast Yahoo s stock had risen since the bid closing at . Friday. At the same time Ballmer had increasingly heard questions about whether the software giant could integrate Yahoo quickly and efficiently enough to justify the deal. U! ntil Saturday Ballmer had maintained that Microsoft would consider a hostile takeover of Yahoo if management would not accept Microsoft s bid. But even that option seemed fraught with more problems than it promised solutions. Yahoo had already made moves to turn over a portion of its paid search advertising to arch rival Google nasdaq GOOG news people given the time a proxy battle would take Ballmer wrote the prospect of seeing Yahoo align more closely with Google jinxed the promise of a positive outcome from the deal. Such a Google deal would fundamentally undermine Yahoo s own strategy and long term viability by encouraging advertisers to use Google as opposed to your Panama paid search system Ballmer wrote. In other words the plan was the most poisonous option Yahoo could devise. When the stock markets open Monday investors will get the chance to express their views of the aborted merger. Chances are the market will applaud Microsoft s decision to get on with its life and business. Silicon Valley executives have noted there has been a signi! ficant exodus of senior managers from Yahoo over the past six months. Yang now faces the challenge of demonstrating to his company and his investors that he has a plan that will keep Yahoo s stock price strong. Also See The Yahoo Deal Deals In Play Microsoft and Yahoo Week Ahead Apple Microsoft Yahoo Read All Comments More On This Topic Companies MSFT YHOO GOOG Article Controls E Mail Print Request Reprints E Mail Newsletters del.icio.us Digg It My Yahoo Share RSS Related Sections Home Technology News Headlines More From Forbes.com Special Reports Advertisement Related Business Topics Computer Furniture Time and Attendance Systems Subscriptions Subscribe To Newsletters Subscriber Customer Service ADVERTISEMENT Related Business Topics Computer Software Business Dsl Content Management Software Email Marketing Software Project Management Software Accounting Software eCommerce Software Help Desk Software Browse All Directories CEO Book Club Book Excerpts Robert A. Levy and Will! iam Mellor Book Review School Daze Andrew Egan Maybe Roger Rosenblatt s satire of academia should be taken as a serious manual for reforming troubled colleges. Sitemap Help Contact Us Investment Newsletters Forbes Conferences Forbes Magazines Forbes Autos Ad Information Forbes

Source: http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/05/03/microsoft-yahoo-deal-tech-enter-cx_ec_0503yahoo.html?feed=rss_technology

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