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Who the heck is running Microsoft’s M&A team? From The Station’s vantage point, it sure looks like billionaire corporate pirate Carl Icahn, who doesn’t even work for Microsoft.
Yahoo’s board of directors, forced by lawyers to meet on a day off (Saturday) and make a decision on Microsoft’s (read that Icahn’s) latest offer to dismantle the pioneering Internet company, naturally voted to reject the “offer” to sell its search business and leave the remainder of the company in Icahn’s control.
If its search engine were sold, the carcass of Yahoo — search is the heart of the company, after all — would belong to Icahn (who could care less about the business itself and is concerned only about what profit he can wring out of the sale) because he would insist that co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang be sent on his way, along with the rest of the current B of Ds. In his dastardly plan, Icahn would install his own puppet board of directors and anoint himself as Vicar of Yahoo, so he can break the company up, sell the pieces and reap more untold billions for his own overstuffed bank account. Who gives a damn about Yahoo users?
How much money is enough, Icahn? (Should we be spelling your name “I con”?)
We’ve written it before, and we’ll write it again, right here for all to see: Carl Icahn is a completely selfish putz and should be avoided at all costs. He’s a rich putz, no denying that. But riches are hardly indicators of happiness; we know lots of unhappy rich people. This bully needs to retire, and the sooner the better. He knows nothing — repeat, nothing — about the IT business and about Yahoo in particular. We do not care that he owns $1 billion in Yahoo stock. Lots of grandmas own stock in companies and know nothing or next to nothing about them. Icahn is a squealing granny of an investor who needs to be slapped, and often.
Terms of the latest “offer” were not divulged July 12. We can only image how putrid they were.
“It is ludicrous to think that our board would accept such a proposal,” Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock said in a statement to the press on Saturday, July 12. “While this type of erratic and unpredictable behavior is consistent with what we’ve come to expect with Microsoft, we will not be bludgeoned into a transaction that is not in the best interest of our stockholders.”
What else did you expect them to say, you Icahn-following nincompoops in Redmond?
Steve Ballmer, why are you allowing this snake to push you around? You are a Tier 1 accomplice in this woebegotten, half-baked exercise in ineptitude. Perhaps this whole thing wasn’t even your idea after all. Yahoo and Microsoft will never mix; get used to the idea. Don’t keep traipsing back with thinly veiled “different” takeover packages given on a 24-hour, take-it-or-leave it basis. Let it go. Now.
The conflict is as basic as open source versus proprietary, right brain versus left brain, open-minded versus close-minded, creative versus anal.
Sheesh.