Sky! Blue!, Oceans! Wet!, Yahoo! Overvalued! Yahoo!'s planned sell-off of its core business may not end up bringing the cash return investors had hoped for. Citing sources familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal reports that Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web is receiving bids of around $2-3bn on its core business, significantly less than the $4-8bn …
""Let the Bidding begin!
I bid $3.50 and a bag of M&Ms."
I bid $1.25 and one stick of chewing gum. And that's my final offer. Will anyone bid lower than me?"
I bid that I'll take it off their hands if they pay me a flat minimum of $10 million. That minimum prices goes up by 10% per day. The clock starts now.
First order of business once I'm in charge: track down all senior execs employed by Yahoo over the last 15 years and force them to pay back every penny of their salary and any bonuses, especially including all golden parachutes, on the grounds that as they did either no work or negative work, all of that money was stolen from the company. Second order of business: radical restructuring, with an eye towards restoring the company to long-term profitability. Note 'long-term'; the last 15 years have been dominated by short-term thinking, which is one of the major reasons why the company is in the shape it's in right now.
Maybe they (Yahoo) need to rip off the golden parachutes. I wonder how much the entire board gets if it's sold? Surely the buyer doesn't want to pay for everyone's parachute over and above the value of the company? Even at the rumored bid prices, I suspect it's just a tad (read as: way over) over valued.
Well, I'm about to become an ex-Yahoo :-)
It was a tad predictable that eventually it would all end in a buyout, but I shall miss the people. What did for Y! in the end was it's grinding bureaucracy, which made even the smallest change so painful. When you've attended a meeting with Filo where one of the 5 top topics was whether a Bangalore office needed two or three pieces of 500 dollar (second hand!) equipment, you can see why the management team never had the time to do their real jobs. When Marissa joined, one of her first actions was to demand to review the CV of everyone given a job offer: and this process went on for nearly a year. I think she fit right in :-(
"... in the end was it's grinding bureaucracy, which made even the smallest change so painful..."
Sort of the same sadness everywhere.
Procrastinating, instead of empowering.
Trashing, instead of repairing & building up.
Sh!#!ng the most, instead of starting the cleaning up.
'Cloud' builders. Good winds! Best wishes... </sarcasm>
No particular objection to the bean counters carefully looking over CAPEX. The trouble is more to the effect they both oversaw annual budgeting *and* then insisted on approving each line item as it came up. No real autonomy for any manager, who spent most of their time endlessly re-justifying the same decisions, which were often modified again :-(
"It's obvious Marissa Meyer needs to lean in a bit more at work."
Did she not demand an on-site nursery, but only for her children? It makes one wonder who has actually been running the company.
"Nanny, tell mummy to ask for eight billion dollars. I want to buy My Little Pony, I mean Hasbro."
Thinking of the minion dudes and dudettes working there.
Damaged merchandise could some feel. Are they really?
Bidders are for the patents, trademarks, shares...
But a company is not made of that.
A company is made of people.
What happened to them?
What we know for sure is that
Most than anything else, what's going to be trashed over the board, are the minions.
Simply because they where Yahoo!
[...Why didn't you mutiny when the ship was still savable?]
Anything else are just assets.
How typical. The company is going bust, the accounts are in the red, but never mind - the desk where the buck stops will see a bright day anyway.
Sorry, but from where I stand, you only get the rewards if the company is doing well.
And when the ship sinks, the CEO should be the first to feel the pinch. No bonus package for a botched sale.
But I'm daydreaming again. Nurse ! My medication ! In a glass of Glenlivet, as usual, my blood pressure is rising again.
Maybe they'd get more if they put it on eBay.
Some tips for the board:
Always start the bidding at 99p to garner more interest.
Go for a 10 day auction.
Never use a buy it now.
Make sure you take decent photos.
Answer questions put to you honestly.
Accurately explain why you're selling the item and the condition its on.
E.g. "Large Web 1.0 business for sale. Selling because we cant be bothered anymore, have other projects to complete but want offload the crap. May have slight scuffs and dents. In partial working order. Use for spare parts only."
I thought Marissa Mayer was rocking her job. She's taken a company which was in theory a tech company and turned it into an investment company that seems to have rocked the scene by investinting in Alibaba and thereby increasing the share value of the company. She also managed to make the company look like two separate organizations which should allow her to sell off everything that made Yahoo a tech company for far more than it's likely worth to any sucker willing to buy it. She then will make the shareholders a pile of dough, they'll have their investments traded for stock in a profitable tech company that will show returns. They will also maintain ownership of shares in the investment firm which owns a chunk of Alibaba and be even richer from that.
At what point in time did she fail as CEO? Is there anyone else that could have possibly shown a massive return on investment like she's about to?
BTW... Did the author of this article seem to think the CEO of a company was supposed to actually fix the company? Do you even have the slightest idea what the responsibility of a CEO is?
I'm a little confused as to what it is that yahoo does that is even remotely relevant anymore.
The only thing I can figure it is that they exist so that news agencies can write articles about their latest inability to make any money or sell a piece of themselves off. Is there anything else?
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