Shareholders should be able to control a corporation, but in reality boards like Yahoo’s treat shareholders as an inconvenience and not as a master. Icahn’s investment strategy often seems less like maximising returns and more like a personal crusade against such corrupted boards. Which is fair enough, since it’s his money. I personally incline towards the ‘dump the stock and let them drown’ philosophy, but I have far less money than Icahn, so decide for yourself who’s right.

Share is not a random number. It is a near perfect approximation of net long term and short term worth of a company. Here you notice a unambiguous pattern - share prices go up when a deal with Microsoft is more likely and vice versa. Which means net value ( long term and short term combined) of Yahoo increases with merger. How can a legitimate company increase its value - only by delivering new or better services to its customers. So shareholders think that Yahoo with Microsoft is better than Yahoo alone. Anyone can sell their shares. But they can sell it at a higher price only if the buyer thinks Yahoo is worth more. If you think that market is always stupid but you are always smart, then think again.

“Remember a corporation is controlled by the shareholders. Shareholders majority can overrule any board or execs.” - Yes, but they should give board a chance before loosing hope.

@Anurag

Yahoo is not into philanthropy business. They have to make money to survive. They have more responsibility to their share holders than customers. Forget the greedy bunch, think about the retired people and pensioners who invested in Yahoo. One cannot simply take public money and bask in luxury like a private company. They can stay in business only if they can monetize their innovative services and generate value for their investors. It is a commitment that comes as part of package when you go public.

It’s ironic, but it’s in Yahoo’s interest to keep search and display advertising on one platform. The impact of display ads today is hard to measure so they can only sell impressions. But online vendors with both search and display ads (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft) plan to track what display ads users see over time and then correlate that with search queries. That will make it possible monetize display ads with a higher price. Most of the brand equity and awareness they create today gets harvested by search ads. But Yahoo is under such pressure to do a deal they are willing to mortgage this future synergy. If they weren’t so incompetent at telling their story that might be different.

http://techstrategypartners.wo.....g-carcass/

Lets face it, if Carl Ichan can’t figure out how to fix this mess, then nobody can..let alone Jerry Yang.

Jerry Yang has to realize that Ichan is the only shot Yahoo has got to survive.

The never ending Microsoft-Yahoo saga continues with new twists every day. Today Microsoft expressed their interest to purchase Yahoo if the current board members are overturned and a new board is elected after the share holders meeting. The Microsoft….

http://www.twistedpine.org/sea.....sodeNum=29

I think people who spew this statement miss the fact that shareholders can easily sell their shares. Majority shareholders of Yahoo do not care enough to vote against the execs.

Remember a corporation is controlled by the shareholders. Shareholders majority can overrule any board or execs.

Steve, what are you sitting on your pile of money for anyway? You are like King Midas. Time to step out from behind Bill and get your feet wet. Let’s go! The longer you take, the harder it is going to be to integrate. You can’t tell me there isn’t any scorched Earth parties going on over at Yahoo.

For those who haven’t looked into who Carl Icahn is (tit bits from around the web):

http://www.jogtheweb.com/reade.....rackId=166

“Pleease Carl make our stock price move!”

Yahoo overplayed their hand and now they’re screwed. I just hope Microsoft doesn’t mess up the good parts of Yahoo.