Yahoo CEO says still open to Microsoft talks Forbes

Yahoo CEO says still open to Microsoft talks 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 E Mail Newsletters RSS Reuters Yahoo CEO says still open to Microsoft talks . . AM ET United States By Michele Gershberg NEW YORK May Reuters Yahoo Inc nasdaq YHOO news people chief Jerry Yang was set to meet staff on Tuesday after signaling a more open stance towards a takeover by Microsoft Corp. nasdaq MSFT news people Yang told Reuters in an interview on Monday that he had mixed feelings about events at the weekend when talks brok! e down. Investors showed their disappointment over the breakup of negotiations by sending Yahoo shares down percent on Monday. Asked if Yahoo would still leave a door open for Microsoft to return Yang said If they have anything new to say we would be open. . I am more than willing to listen. Yang said it had been Microsoft that ended the discussions. We were negotiating a way to find common ground and then on Saturday they chose to walk away said the year old co founder of the pioneering Internet company. They started it and they walked away. Yang who owns about percent of the company was expected to meet with employees on Tuesday in an effort to reassure them after the Microsoft talks ended. Yahoo shares rose . percent in Frankfurt on Tuesday. After three months of negotiations Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer raised his offer for Yahoo to per share from an initial for a total deal value of about . billion. Yang held out for per share saying that even the sweetened offer did no! t value Yahoo properly for its Web search advertising technology its prominence in selling display ads and its lucrative overseas holdings. But its two largest shareholders independently told The New York Times they would have sold for as little as . I am extremely angry at Jerry Yang and at the so called independent board Gordon Crawford portfolio manager for Capital Research Global Investors the largest Yahoo shareholder with some percent of stock told the newspaper. Some analysts said Yahoo shares which dropped . to end at . on Monday could have fallen percent to closer to . its price before Microsoft made its bid public on Feb. . But the descent was cushioned by investors who are betting Microsoft will eventually come back to the table. This is going to play out over the next several months and there is still a chance Microsoft will buy the company for somewhere around a share said Todd Dagres general partner at venture capital fund Spark Capital. Late Monday Yahoo said it will hold its annual stockholder meeting on July . A GOOGLE VICTORY! Shares of Microsoft rose initially on Monday on investor relief that it was not paying billions more for Yahoo though the stock ended down slightly amid concerns about how the software maker would develop its Web strategy in the face of a dominant Google Inc. nasdaq GOOG news people Microsoft courted Yahoo to capitalize on the rapidly growing market for Internet advertising one that has long been served by Yahoo s search e mail and Web communities. It is also trying to fend off the expansion of Google which has made inroads into Microsoft s home turf with a portfolio of Web based applications e mail and messaging. But now that a deal has fallen apart Google has emerged as the key beneficiary. Shares in the company rose . percent on Monday. Google has just kept their foot on the accelerator said Derek Brown analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald. Neither Yahoo nor Microsoft in their current state seems to be a material competitive threat. Yahoo is likely to press alternative strategi! es in coming weeks including a search advertising partnership with Google and a deal for Time Warner nyse TWX news people Inc s AOL Internet unit. A Google deal would boost Yahoo s operating performance in the near term but runs the risk of regulatory scrutiny over an alliance between the Internet s top two players. Google and Yahoo are hammering out the intricacies of a potential deal and also are sharing their plans with antitrust regulators a person close to Google who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter said. In a letter to Yang over the weekend Ballmer warned that any deal between Yahoo and Google would be difficult to unravel and would preclude an agreement with Microsoft. Yang told Reuters the company would take care to structure any new efforts to preserve as much as possible long term flexibility for Yahoo both operationally and strategically. SHAREHOLDER PRESSURE Analysts expect a flurry of shareholder lawsuits against Yahoo and say it may even face direct pressure on its board. Already some Yahoo shareholders have sta! rted to question how talks were handled. Bill Miller a portfolio manager for Legg Mason nyse LM news people Yahoo s second largest shareholder told the New York Times in a Sunday interview that he would have considered selling to Microsoft for or a share. While that was more than Microsoft s offer it was less than the per share Yahoo s board had insisted on. Capital Research s Crawford also said investors generally were looking for Yahoo to sell at . He hoped shareholders pushed Yahoo to revisit the issue but was not optimistic he told the newspaper. The company owns about percent of Yahoo. Yang said in a post on the company s blog on Sunday night No one is celebrating about the outcome of these past three months . and no one should. We live and work in a competitive world and the Web is only going to get more competitive. Executing on our strategic plan is what matters most. Additional reporting by Tiffany nyse TIF news people Wu in New York Muralikumar Anantharaman in Bos! ton Anupreeta Das in San Francisco and Peter Henderson in Los Angeles Editing by Derek Caney Braden Reddall Richard Chang Rory Channing Copyright Reuters Click for Restriction New Game of Advertising Google Risks Identity Crisis Read All Comments More On This Topic Companies YHOO MSFT GOOG TWX LM Article Controls E Mail E Mail Newsletters del.icio.us Digg It My Yahoo Share RSS Related Sections Home Breaking News News Headlines More From Forbes.com Special Reports Subscriptions Subscribe To Newsletters Subscriber Customer Service ADVERTISEMENT Related Business Topics Starting A Small Business Small Business Loans 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. 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Source: http://www.forbes.com/reuters/feeds/reuters/2008/05/06/2008-05-06T090247Z_01_L06893011_RTRIDST_0_YAHOO-MICROSOFT.html


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