MS offering to buy Yahoo ???

[yumcimil]

Yeah, saw that over the weekend. Seems a lot like a negotiating tactic, rather than a "Hell no, we won't sell!" sort of thing. It's not like Microsoft are exactly short on funds.

I'm going ahead with ordering the network version - in the short term, it will look after our needs, and hopefully by the time MS manage to kill it off, google for domains will be in a slightly more competitive state.

[putt1ck]

Originally Posted by yumcimil

Yeah, saw that over the weekend. Seems a lot like a negotiating tactic, rather than a "Hell no, we won't sell!" sort of thing. It's not like Microsoft are exactly short on funds.

Actually, Microsoft are short of funds; they had US$50bn in the bank ~18months ago, but engaged in share buybacks and granting dividends (the latter is an activity they have avoided historically but have had to start using recently to prop up the share price) as well as some other acquisitions; the end result is that the offer of US$44bn as a 50/50 cash/stock deal was almost certainly arrived at on the basis of "how much cash we got? Oh. Ok, double it with stock at the current profit announcement bump value."

In other words, US22bn is all the cash MS have. Hence the market jitters over the offer and an MS share price drop. Hence the headline figure of 44 is now more like 41. And Yahoo! prices are above the original offer price i.e. anyone who wanted the cash can now sell for *more* than the offer.

So if MS raises their bid and keeps it 50/50, they will have to borrow large sums of money (as in 11 figures, not counting the .00!) to cover the cash part of the purchase, putting the company into debt for the first time in recent history (at least the last 10 years). The larger the offer and the greater the debt incurred, the longer it will take to ever pay off. And so their share price will drop even further, and so the offer value will reduce and so on and so on.

A high stakes game indeed. And I think EU regulators would only let the sale complete if monopoly areas were hived off, e.g. Zimbra is safe.

Still think Zimbra should be GPL'd though...

[dljordaneku]

Here is another story I ran across.

Yahoo in talks with AOL

dj

[sturgis]

Yahoo rejects a takeover bid of more than $40bn from computer software giant Microsoft saying it is too low.

BBC NEWS | Business | Yahoo rejects Microsoft approach

[dwmtractor]

Originally Posted by dljordaneku

Here is another story I ran across.

Yahoo in talks with AOL

dj

And this is supposed to give us hope? Anybody try to decode an attachment from AOL mail recently?

[tgx]

From the 'experts'.
"We continue to view a Yahoo sale to Microsoft as the most likely outcome,"

What's behind Yahoo's rejection of Microsoft bid? | InfoWorld | News | 2008-02-11 | By Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service

[raj]

more news:
...Microsoft Corp. fired back at Yahoo on Monday, signaling that it wasn't backing down in its takeover attempt and calling Yahoo's decision to reject its $45 billion unsolicited bid "unfortunate." ...

Yahoo rejects Microsoft's offer, saying it is undervalued - Feb. 11, 2008

[putt1ck]

...and one to circulate widely, if you want to ensure MS don't get Yahoo!:

"
Cambiar Investors is one Microsoft shareholder that liquidated its holdings after the Yahoo buyout bid news.

"We...liquidated on the news," said Brian Barish, Cambiar president. "Microsoft knows even less about the Internet than Yahoo. I can't see how they can make the business better."
"

From Yahoo rejects Microsoft's bid | Tech News on ZDNet

[fselendic]

A few analysts on future of Zimbra i MS deal goes though.

"Zimbra could be divested by Microsoft if it succeeds in its unfolding bid to acquire Yahoo, a banker and two analysts in the space told mergermarket.

Yahoo bought Zimbra for USD 350m in September for its open source collaboration software. The acquisition was seen by many as a counter to Google’s developing suite of online collaboration-oriented applications, such as Google Spreadsheets.

Yet that same strategic position may undercut its value for Microsoft, whose own mail, instant messaging and office applications fill a similar niche, said a banker familiar with Yahoo’s strategy. That could lead to a sale, he said.

Buyers could include IBM, SAP, EMC, Oracle, Salesforce.com or Novell, said IDC analyst Mark Levitt. Sun Microsystems could also be interested, said a second analyst."

"With Zimbra being an open source competitor to Microsoft technologies, Kusnetzky said a quick death could also be in its future. ”I would see them more squashing it than trying to sell it to someone and thus create a competitor to its own Office products,” he said."


Sun or Red Hat would be my choices. However, I really doubt MS would sell Zimbra. Qick death is a nice phrase

[dljordaneku]

Originally Posted by fselendic

"Zimbra could be divested by Microsoft if it succeeds in its unfolding bid to acquire Yahoo, a banker and two analysts in the space told mergermarket.

I guess one thing we could hope for is that the government would require MS to divest Zimbra out before allowing the sale to go through. I know that AT&T is purchasing the cell phone company that provides us our Blackberry service and the government won't allow AT&T to buy our market since they are already here.

So the government told them they have to divest our market first. So AT&T and Verizion are swapping some markets in order to allow the sale to go through. Verizion is in the same boat with another market and that is the market that they are swapping with AT&T.

dj