the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

The following article may be a piece to fight against Icahn, but in my eyes he comes off like an asshole:
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/0805 ... ahoo_icahn

I mean, you start a company, bring to success only to have someone like Icahn force you to sell it against your convictions because he and a few other want to make some more money. There is nothing wrong with making money, but when the jobs and the mission of company is in jeopardy then I believe that selling it (to a competitor) is the wrong thing to do.


That and I also like my Yahoo Mail.

Back to OTT with ya.

Darthwing Teorist wrote:The following article may be a piece to fight against Icahn, but in my eyes he comes off like an asshole:

I mean, you start a company, bring to success only to have someone like Icahn force you to sell it against your convictions because he and a few other want to make some more money. There is nothing wrong with making money, but when the jobs and the mission of company is in jeopardy then I believe that selling it (to a competitor) is the wrong thing to do.

Pretty much the entire goal for any company (at least in the US), and particularly for its board of directors is to "maximize shareholder value". If the current Yahoo directors think they can get returns higher than what was offered by the Msft deal, they haven't convinced anyone of it. Their 'success' looked pretty limp up until the merger offer was announced in February, having lost 50% of its value over the previous 2 years. Icahn is doing his bit as an investor to make sure the directors follow their stated goals. If you start a company, then the easiest way to avoid such a consequence is not to take it public. Alternatively, if Jerry Yang is that convinced of success, there's nothing stopping him doing a management buy out offering more than Msft and taking the company private again.