No Interest in Acquiring Yahoo, Says Microsoft

Following remarks by Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer during the Gartner Symposium ITxpo in Orlando, shares of Yahoo exploded on the possibility of the two giants reopening acquisition negotiations. Ballmer indicated that the acquisition of Yahoo “would make sense economically,” pointing out that not only the Redmond company's shareholders, but also those of the Cupertino-based Internet giant would benefit from such a move. However, in an official statement later yesterday, Microsoft denied that the Yahoo deal is rematerializing.

“Our position hasn’t changed. Microsoft has no interest in acquiring Yahoo!; there are no discussions between the companies,” the software giant stated. While Ballmer's comments were interpreted as a sign that Microsoft was yet again looking to Yahoo as a fast solution to close a portion of the gap that separates the Redmond giant from Google on the search engine market. Yahoo shares, which were trading at under $11, jumped approximately 10% to $12.9 just because of Ballmer's remarks.

Still, with Microsoft saying a firm “no” to a potential marriage with Yahoo, the stock of the Cupertino Internet company is bound to continue its descendant trend. At the start of February 2008, Microsoft made an unsolicited acquisition bid for Yahoo offering $31 per share, for a transaction totaling $44.6 billion.

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang turned down everything Microsoft threw at him, and opted to partner with Google. Unable to reach any sort of agreement, the Redmond company announced on May 3, 2008, that it was completely withdrawing its proposal to acquire Yahoo. All additional negotiations between the two companies ended up in failures, with Yahoo becoming more and more segmented, while the value of its share continued to drop. On October 16, Ballmer underlined that, in his perspective, Yahoo continues to believe that it is worth even more than $33 per share, even with its stock depreciated to almost $10 per share.