Jerry Yang’s Departure $24-a-Share Too Late…
by John Paczkowski
Posted on November 19, 2008 at 11:05 AM PT
To this day, I believe the best thing for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo.”
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer knocked the wind out of Yahoo’s share price again today when he dismissed the notion that Redmond might renew its bid for the foundering Internet company now that Yahoo’s $2 billion man has agreed to step down as CEO.
“Let me be as clear as I think I’ve tried to be publicly,” Ballmer said at the company’s annual shareholders meeting Wednesday. “We are done with all acquisition discussions with Yahoo. I’ve said that a bunch of times. Somehow some people have gotten confused nonetheless. We thought we had something that made sense. (It) didn’t make sense to them. We’ve moved on.”
Ballmer allowed that a search partnership between Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo (YHOO) is still “an interesting possibility.” But he said there are currently no talks about such an agreement.
Shares in Yahoo fell $2.02 to $9.53 on the news.
