No surprise here. Yahoo shareholder dissatisfaction is following a trend line inverse to the company’s plummeting share price. In fact, the price has dipped so low that Ironfire Capital founder Eric Jackson–the dissident Yahoo investor who agitated for change at the company and the creator of the Yahoo! Plan B investor community–has dumped his Yahoo shares.
Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd seems to have managed to cut the fat from the company without hitting any of its internal organs. HP reported a 10 percent increase in its fiscal third-quarter earnings Tuesday, while profits rose 14 percent to $2 billion.
As Steve Jobs would say: “BOOM.” Apple has eclipsed Google in market value. Apple’s current market cap: $159.37 billion. Google’s: $157.56 billion.
$36 million. That’s what Yahoo spent in the first half of 2008 for outside counsel on Microsoft’s unsolicited takeover offer and the debacle that followed. “We incurred incremental costs of $36 million primarily for outside advisers related to Microsoft’s proposals to acquire all or a part of the Company, other strategic alternatives, the recently resolved proxy contest, and related litigation defense costs,” Yahoo disclosed in a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Yahoo’s annual shareholder meeting is just a few hours old, and already Microsoft is having its say about Chairman Roy Bostock’s portrayal of its buyout bid melodrama. In comments to Yahoo shareholders, Bostock said the board never “resisted” Microsoft’s offer and claimed once again that the software giant was never actually fully engaged in negotiations.
There’s a great scene in “The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!” in which Lt. Frank Drebin, the film’s bumbling protagonist, stands before an exploding fireworks factory, proclaiming, “Nothing to see here! Please disperse! Nothing to see here!” to the assembled onlookers. That scene springs to mind today in light of Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang’s latest “try not to get too distracted by this Microsoft business” message to his employees.
Shareholders suing Yahoo’s board of directors for its alleged mishandling of the Microsoft buyout offer may find their efforts to pull the company’s controversial severance plan something of a fool’s errand. Because according to a new company filing, their chances of forcing Yahoo to scrap the plan are about as good as their chances of forcing CEO Jerry Yang to use capital letters in his all-hands memos just like a big boy.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. And lest there be any doubt that Yahoo’s exploratory search outsourcing alliance with Google is just that, consider this: Yahoo opposed such a partnership on Jan. 30–the day before Microsoft announced its bid for the company.
Yahoo’s board has–surprise!–advised shareholders to reject the slate of dissident directors put forward by billionaire investor-agitator Carl Icahn.
Looks like billionaire investor Carl Icahn will only need 9 of the 10 dissident directors he’d hoped to appoint to Yahoo’s board. Longtime Yahoo director, Edward Kozel resigned today, reducing the company’s board from 10 members to 9.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
Best use of the Beeker “meee” ever.
While the technology behind the Telephone is new, the design is reassuringly old-fashioned, reminiscent of a phrenologist’s horn or ear-candle in form. We found the experience far more comfortable than the one we had with the Telegraph.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
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