Shpigler the Shark has some excellent advice for Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang on negotiating with Steve Ballmer. Remind him that he has other options. "He can go buy a country. Take $44 billion and buy a country. Go buy Liberia. Try and monetize Liberia! ... Be cool when you talk about numbers. You are bigger than $44 billion dollars. $98 billion in cash. If not, I will go to Google." Catch the full video after the jump.
In his latest companywide memo, copied below, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang wants to "make sure you all realize how essential you are to yahoo!s success." And by "you all" he means all but the 1,000 or so he planned to "reallocate" in the next few months. But maybe it would have been awkward to take those slotted for firing off the email list?
Jerry Yang is slowly but surely acquiring a clue: Rather than waiting for his "confidential" memos to leak onto the blogs, he's just filing them directly with the SEC, lack of capitalization and all. One wonders why he bothered to mark it "confidential" in the first place, though. One sure way to know it's authentic: "We want to emphasize that absolutely no decisions have been made," Yang writes. Yep, that's Yang all right.
A source inside Yahoo says the company is reconsidering a previously discussed business partnership with Google as an alternative to Microsoft's $44 billion hostile takeover offer. Yahoo believes that offer, at $31 a share, significantly undervalues the company. Private equity firms and News Corp. have been named as other possible suitors for Yahoo, but neither are seen as realistically able to get a deal together. The Wall Street Journal reported today that Google CEO Eric Schmidt called Yahoo cofounder and CEO Jerry Yang to offer Google's help in thwarting an unwanted Microsoft takeover of Yahoo.
Yahoo founders David Filo and Jerry Yang own 80,833,066 and 54,110,564 shares of Yahoo, respectively. At Microsoft's offer price, the pair have made almost $1.6 billion since yesterday's close and stand to cash out more than $4 billion total if the deal goes through. More amazing? Ousted CEO Terry Semel stands to cash out more than $650 million — not a bad reward for reviving Yahoo and then running it into the ground. We doubt the scurrilous, unfounded rumors that Semel is a Scientology OT 6, but it would explain a lot. Here's our chart of the top Yahoo shareholders and how much their Yahoo's holdings are worth at Microsoft's price.
This morning, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made the usual polite noises about "integrating" Yahoo's management into Microsoft. The reality? Come on. They're all fired, except for the geeks. If Microsoft had any respect for current management, they would have negotiated a friendly deal instead of launching a takeover. Most of the executive suite will be gone, I bet, within six months if the takeover succeeds. Here are the details on who's in and who's out, starting at the top.
Yahoo employees must be sick of hearing from Jerry Yang. Not two days after an all-hands meeting, Yang is asking employees to dial in to a conference call this morning at 9:30 a.m. to discuss the buyout offer from Microsoft. (Anyone care to supply us with the passcode, or report on what was said after the call? Drop us a line.) Update: The call was apparently for managers only — rank and file just got a Web video from Yang posted on Backyard, Yahoo's internal employee website.
Like a child actor, Yahoo has always lived its life in public — and suffered for it. Its April 1996 IPO, when the company had a mere 49 employees, cast it in the spotlight long before it was ready. And like Hollywood, the stock market looks coldly on a fallen star. Microsoft's offer of $44 billion is less than the company was worth in October 1999 — before the tech-stock bubble's grotesque inflation more than doubled that to $97 billion. It has never regained its swagger.
Yahoo will fire 1,000 employees soon, mostly from its Yahoo Network Division and offices in Europe, according to rumors. Meanwhile, CEO Jerry Yang and President Sue Decker said on this week's earnings call that investors and employees need to be patient. (Haven't they already?) By 2009 Yahoo's display advertising business will have finally turned around. But some are sick of waiting. Yang has been with the company from the start; Decker joined Yahoo as CFO in 2000. The two have had their chance, skeptics say. In this Valleywag poll, tell us: Is it time for this pair to go?
Yahoo cuts will include "a few hundred" from the Yahoo Network Division, the umbrella for Yahoo's sprawling content operations, a new tipster tells us. Combined with deep cuts from Yahoo Germany, France, Italy and Spain, the layoffs should total at least as many as the 1,000 doomed employees CEO Jerry Yang set aside for "reallocation" during yesterday's earnings call. The details seem to confirm older rumors that the layoffs would include featured bloggers from Network Division sites such as Finance and Food.
We're blogging Yahoo's fourth-quarter earnings call live. Rumor had it the company would hold an all-hands at the same time. Now we're hearing that's tomorrow. For what's going on during the call, stay with us.
Rumors abound that Yahoo is set to cut 1,500 to 2,000 employees, under a plan being weighed by CEO Jerry Yang. Sadly, layoffs now only seem logical: Yahoo is doing too much, to too little effect. Extraneous projects are staffed by personnel who should be doing more productive work, or none at all. Cruel? It's capitalism — a notion Yahoo has struggled with since its birth. But it's also not a solution to Yahoo's problems. Simple math shows why.
"The Wall St. buzz is that msft and yhoo are bidding for eBay. My source tells me that Yahoo! has bid 1.76 shares for eBay ($40-41) and is expected to win at that price." So writes Scot Wingo, the plugged-in CEO of ChannelAdvisor, an auctions-software maker in which eBay owns a minority stake. Let's dissect that rumor, shall we?
Jerry Yang has made Yahoo Go 3.0, Yahoo's mobile application platform, a key piece of the strategy to keep his business relevant. Rather than trying to run everything, like Google or Apple, Yahoo will focus on being a friend to all. MySpace, eBay, and MTV. But Yang is once again focused on the wrong partners.
Brad Garlinghouse, the controversial Yahoo executive who won fame by accusing management of spreading investments around like a "thin layer of ... peanut butter", has a sister, Meg, who also works at the company. Who got whom the job at Yahoo is a matter of testy debate. What's undebatable: the brother-and-sister duo practically own Yodel Anecdotal, the company blog, this month. Three full posts are devoted to their glories.
Too many Yahoos? Start calling Jerry Yang "Mr. Freeze." The rumor starting to buzz around Sunnyvale is that hiring will come to a halt in December. If true, get those offer letters out fast. Really, it's about time. The only thing that could be worse for morale than a hiring freeze is continuing to stuff the place with more B-team players. The remaining talent at Yahoo should rejoice at the news of a freeze. An open payroll has merely served to thin the purple blood. Update: Some have pointed out that Yahoo's had some sort of hiring freeze since October. True, our source says, but with so many exceptions that it was ineffective. The hard freeze starts December 3.
Less than a week after Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang was bitchslapped on Capitol Hill, his company has settled with the families of Chinese writers who were jailed in China. Shi Tao and Wang Xiaoning were imprisoned based partly on documents Yahoo says it was "legally required" to hand over. Settlement terms were not disclosed. Yahoo will start a fund to provide "humanitarian relief" to dissidents and their families. Reportedly, one part of the settlement stipulates that Yahoo must lobby the Chinese government to release the two journalists. Right. Like Yahoo's boys in Beijing will have more success swaying Communist hardliners than Yahoo's D.C. reps had in avoiding this embarrassing debacle in the first place.
Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang's second day on Capitol Hill was less pleasant than his first — and no birthday candles this time, either. Gao Qinsheng, mother of imprisoned journalist Shi Tao, and Yu Lin, wife of jailed dissident Wang Xiaoning, railed against Yahoo for helping China's government silence their family members. This after Yang and Yahoo general counsel Michael Callahan apologized before Congress on Tuesday. Word is the two execs also met privately with the relatives to apologize and discuss out how much Yahoo will have to pay to settle a civil suit filed by the two women. (Photo by drs2biz)
Bad enough that Michael Callahan, Yahoo's top lawyer, and Jerry Yang, the company's CEO and cofounder were raked over the coals today by a House committee for the company's role in the imprisonment of Chinese journalist Shi Tao. But Yang suffered the additional indignity of getting the Congressional tongue-lashing on his 39th birthday. Happy birthday, Jerry! Turning 40's going to look easy by comparison.
