Yahoo spent $79 million to thwart Microsoft
By Michael W. Jones
According to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing by Yahoo, the company spent a staggering $79 million dollars last year fighting off the takeover bid by Microsoft.
The money was spent on outside financial advisors. Yahoo was famously able, in the end, to successfully reject the Microsoft attempt. The SEC filing states that Yahoo spent the money on external advisors for advice on how to proceed (or not) with the offers made by Microsoft, how to handle the proxy battle and avoid litigation costs, and how to handle “other strategic alternatives, including the Google agreement.”
Yahoo’s main financial advisers during the takeover crisis were Goldman Sachs and Lehman Bros, whose investment banking arm is now part of Barclays Capital Plc. Also noted in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing is the fact that Yahoo was the subject of five separate stockholder lawsuits filed against the company last year that pertained to the Microsoft proposal, according to a Reuters article.
It was last February when Microsoft made its $44.6 billion buyout offer for Yahoo public although they increased the offer to $47.5 billion before finally walking away in May. During the period between the two offers, Yahoo tried to arrange an alternative search advertising partnership with it’s main rival, Google Inc. Yahoo even conducted exploratory talks with Time Warner Inc’s AOL business unit about a potential partnership.
Nothing has come of any of these proposed partnerships. Rumors still persist that Microsoft is interested in acquiring all or part of Yahoo, although there has been little action since its offers were rejected last year. Google did not pursue the possible collaboration with Yahoo mainly because of regulatory questions that surfaced regarding monopoly in the search marketplace. The AOL partnership was the brainchild of former Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, and it has seems to have been dropped since Yang’s resignation as Yahoo leader.
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February 28th, 2009
Now I bet they wished that Microsoft had taken them over. Oh, and how I love how one of their advisors was Lehman Bros. That must have been good advice.