The Unbearable Yahoo-AOL-Microsoft Dance
Someone buy something, please. Our New York sighting of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer with Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock missed one: Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes, who'd like to unload AOL.
Microsoft CEO, Yahoo Chairman Meet in New York
So much for a new boss ending Yahoo's drama. Why did the company's chairman meet Microsoft's Steve Ballmer at the Time Warner Center Thursday, two days after Yahoo named Carol Bartz its new CEO?
Fire Yahoo's board!
After a CEO's ouster, the knives always end up in the wrong person's back. Take how Jerry Yang is being ritually badmouthed now that he's out of Yahoo's top job: Such a nice guy. We all loved him. But he couldn't make a decision to save his life. Now, Yahoo's board of directors is being lionized for giving the nice…
Do Yahoos vote the Yahoo way?
Miguel Helft of the New York Times looks at shareholder discontent at Yahoo another way: If one assumes insiders voted their shares for the company's slate of directors, and discounts those, then the withheld votes on CEO Jerry Yang and Roy Bostock, the board's chairman, are even more striking. One problem with this…
Yahoo recount could threaten Yang, Bostock board seats
Unbelievably, the firm which counted shareholder votes for Yahoo omitted tens of millions of shares voted by dissident shareholder Capital Research & Management — and badly skewed the result. Yahoo calls it a "tabulation error." If you can call shifting 200 million votes from the "no" column to the "yes column",…
Nearly 1 in 5 Yahoo investors followed Valleywag's voting instructions
There's some kerfuffle about the voting in Yahoo's board election — something to do with whether some large investor voted or not. We don't care! What really pleases us is that the four board members we suggested get the boot — Roy Bostock, Art Kern, Ron Burkle, and Gary Wilson — scored the lowest in the vote.
Carl Icahn suddenly decides he doesn't want to create a scene
Now that corporate raider Carl Icahn has been mollified with a seat on Yahoo's board, he's all about keeping a low profile. On his blog, the Icahn report, he says he will not be appearing the Yahoo shareholder meeting: "The proxy fight is over and it will not do shareholders or Yahoo any good to have the annual…
Yahoo shareholders still planning rowdy annual meeting
Major Yahoo shareholders still want blood from CEO Jerry Yang, chairman Roy Bostock and director Ron Burkle, whom they hold responsible for botching negotiations with Microsoft. BoomTown's Kara Swisher predicts that at least one large fund manager will refuse to vote for their reelection to Yahoo's board during the…
Bostock and Yang's memo: "Carl Icahn-Microsoft alliance will destroy stockholder value"
In a memo filed with the SEC, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock made what we can only hope will be their final case to Yahoo shareholders as to why they should vote against Carl Icahn's alternative board at the company's August 1 annual meeting. (While Yang also signed the memo, you can tell…
Bostock: Why can't Microsoft be more like InBev?
Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock says that if Microsoft had handled itself the way InBev did, buying Anheuser-Busch for $52 billion even after A-B rejected an initial offer, Yahoo and Microsoft would probably be one company by now. "InBev was a classic, perfectly managed takeover," said Bostock.
Yang and Bostock can't agree on whether to sell Yahoo search
Do Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock disagree on whether Yahoo should ever sell its search business to Microsoft? Citing several sources, BoomTown's Kara Swisher says she knows what Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang wants, period:
Icahn, Microsoft say Bostock twisted facts about weekend negotiations
In a letter to Yahoo shareholders, corporate raider Carl Icahn writes that he's never seen a company "distort, omit and twist" facts quite the way Yahoo did in a statement the company released Saturday night. Yahoo said it had rejected Microsoft's latest offer to buy Yahoo's search business. In the statement, Yahoo…
Icahn files replacement Yahoo board slate with SEC
Corporate raider Carl Icahn made his proxy fight for control of the Yahoo board official today, filing an alternative slate with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The slate includes nine of the ten names Icahn already put forward in a letter to Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock. Bob Shaye, former cochairman and…
The Yahoo board members we'd most like to see fired
Corporate greenmailer Carl Icahn, some old dude who was stupid enough to buy a lot of shares of Yahoo on the premise that Microsoft would buy the company after it said it wouldn't, wants four seats on Yahoo's board. Yahoo only prepared to reward his intelligence by offering him two, Kara Swisher reports. Why so…
Microsoft looking for a third to get in on the Yahoo action
Microsoft's latest plan: acquire Yahoo's search business and convince either Time Warner or News Corp to snatch up the rest. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Yahoo board chairman Roy Bostock had a meeting scheduled Monday to discuss the plans, but Ballmer called it off at the last minute, reports the Wall Street…
Dear Yahoo shareholders, we totes heart you, signed Roy and Jerry
In an open letter to shareholders, CEO Jerry Yang and chairman Roy Bostock assure abused shareholders that they're the only ones who truly love you. They know that Microsoft offered to buy your shares at a premium, and then tried to be just a friend with search benefit, offering $1 billion check and an $8 billion…
Report: Microsoft-Yahoo search deal back on the table
After a deal outsourcing search advertising to Google failed to impress shareholders, Yahoo board members — including chairman Roy Bostock — are reconsidering a deal that would outsource and sell Yahoo's search business to Microsoft instead. This according to a News.com report, which cites a single source — "one…
Step two in Carl Icahn's five-point Yahoo plan: replace Yang
Corporate raider Carl Icahn laid out a five step plan for Yahoo in a letter to Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock today. In brief, Icahn wants to replace Yahoo's poison pill severance package, usher CEO Jerry Yang back into his role as "Chief Yahoo," tell Microsoft that it can have any of Yahoo unless it owns all of it,…
Bostock responds to Icahn
Dear Carl:
We are in receipt of your letter of June 4th and take issue with its content. Your letter seriously misrepresents and manipulates the facts regarding the recent events pertaining to Microsoft and Yahoo!. You rely on, as “facts,” a series of unsubstantiated allegations from a complaint filed in a Delaware…
By shareholder demand, Yang now under "adult supervision" during negotiations
When Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer met with Yahoo cofounders CEO Jerry Yang and David Filo on May 3, Yang and Filo refused to come down from their $37 per share price, according to Kara Swisher's new account of the meeting. Yang left thinking everything went well, and that he and ballmer were just starting to dicker…
