After Microsoft pulled off its bid Yahoo! Stock plugned by $5 within a day. Its been called a Black Monday for Yahoo! by some.
Both Yahoo! and Microsoft folks are trading charges that the other party was not responsive enough.
According to people familiar with the matter, excutives at Microsoft were in apparent disbelief at the lack of negotiation of any kind, whether on the phone or face to face....
Frustrations and negotiations took on a new sense of urgency on April 26, as the Microsoft deadline passed with no meaningful communication of any kind.
With Microsoft prepared to end the whole process then, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and Chairman Roy Bostock suggested to Microsoft that it shouldn't walk from the deal; that maybe Microsoft would be interested in acquiring just Yahoo's search business. Microsoft rebuffed the suggestion.
Yahoo!'s side vehemently disagreed:
with the characterizations, and on one point in particular: that Microsoft claimed there was no reaction of any kind following the company's Friday decision to raise its bid to $33 from the original $31, something particularly troubling to the world's largest software maker.
Instead, this source said there was never a "formal offer" of $33, just a suggestion that Microsoft would be willing to come up "a couple of bucks" on the offer. Nothing, he says, was every put in writing. When Yahoo bankers wanted more details, even a written offer, details
on whether the new offer would be all-cash, or cash and stock, or a collared offer of some kind to reduce the downside if Microsoft shares lost value, it was Microsoft that refused to respond."That they were 'dumbfounded ...' It doesn't make any sense," this source said. "They were incredibly and purposely vague."
But the biggest dispute comes from the allegation that Yahoo refused to engage in any active negotiations. This source said the negotiations had always been robust. "It is simply factually incorrect to make it seem as though we weren't actively engaged in robust negotiations," he says...."It wasn't because we weren't curious, they weren't engaging," this source said. "Were we unengaged, or asking for too much money?" It can't be both, he says. "Microsoft is lying. How much communication do they want? They were upset because we wouldn't accept a low-ball bid."
Shareholders of Yahoo! feel let down as they don't share the view of Jerry Yang that Yahoo! has a bright future. Btw thinking about it philosophically -- the trading of blames can be done by rich or powerful businessmen. If this were a situation where an employee felt let down by his/her company, the weaker side (employee) would be taking all the blame.
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