Filed under: Deals, Rumors, Management, Rants and raves, Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo! (YHOO)
If you’ve read BusinessWeek’s latest story on the Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) saga, then you can’t really know what to believe!
According to the story, Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) remains highly interested in re-entering speaks to acquire Yahoo!, and it also states those speaks may already be in progress.
Then it states Microsoft may want the whole company, but also might just be interested in the search element.
To this the magazine adds that if none of this works, Yahoo! might go ahead and work out a deal to give Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) a non-exclusive right to either sell its search results or include it in its auctions — or none of the above.
It concludes that sources think there is a 50% chance a deal will happen. Now that’s strong conviction! If a deal happens, they go on to say that the buyout price might be $33, $35, or $37 per share (it closed yesterday at $26.15) but that some compromise might be reached. Gee whiz, a 50/50 shot and projecting some sort of compromise.
Carl Icahn is rumored to be deeply involved in making something happen, but then again management is not interested in his input. “Something will definitely happen soon,” states one of the people involved in solving Yahoo’s conundrum.
This is all as clear as mud and any investment in Yahoo! is highly speculative unless you are actually at the table, whatever table that might be.
Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the principal for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. He writes the columns Chasing Value and Serious Money. Disclosure: I don’t own shares in the stocks mentioned in this story.
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