Microsoft Corp. has withdrawn its $42.3 billion bid to buy Yahoo Inc., scrapping an attempt to snap up the tarnished Internet icon in hopes of toppling online search and advertising leader Google Inc.
The decision to walk away from the deal came Saturday after last-ditch efforts to negotiate a mutually acceptable sale price proved unsuccessful.
The talks reached a breaking point after Jerry Yang and David Filo, the co-founders of Sunnyvale-based Yahoo, flew to Seattle in the morning to meet personally with Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer and Kevin Johnson, who runs the software maker’s unprofitable online services division, according to someone familiar with the talks. The person was not authorized to speak publicly and asked not to be identified.
“Clearly a deal is not to be,” Ballmer wrote to Yang in a letter sent late Saturday.
Microsoft was willing to pay $47.5 billion, or $33 per share, up from the bid’s current value of $29.40 per share, according to Ballmer’s letter.
But Yahoo’s board demanded at least $53 billion, or $37 per share, according to Ballmer. That would have been nearly double Yahoo’s stock price of $19.18 at the time Microsoft first made its bid a little over three months ago - seems to me that Jerry Yang really listened to Shpigler’s tips.
Official statement.
The Conversation {1 comments}
so…they held up until the last moment and Microsoft called their bluff. I smell a hostile takeover on the horizon.
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