14 DAY TRIAL // The Yahoo! stock value registered, a couple of days ago, the lowest point in five years. The shares dropped to $17.75, while in November 2007, the share price reached the highest point, namely of $34.08. In May 2008, the stock value per unit continuously went up and down, with a minimum rate of $22 and a maximum of $30. Then came the much talked about tender from Microsoft, which expressed its interest to acquire Yahoo!.
At that moment, Yahoo!'s officials, with CEO Jerry Yang at the helm, decided that the $33 per share offer didn't correspond with the actual value of the Sunnyvale based company. The board turned Microsoft down and asked for a bigger bid but the Redmond company considered it to be unreasonable and, after several months of negotiations, decided to drop the offer. "Yahoo!'s existing business plus its recently signed commercial agreement with Google has superior financial value and less complexity and risk than the Microsoft/Icahn proposal," said Yahoo!'s representatives on July 12, referring to the fact that one of the company’s investors was holding separate talks with Microsoft.
Activist investor Carl Icahn started a fervent protest against Yang's decision, claiming that a collaboration with Microsoft (or, better said, an acquisition) would have reinforced the status of Yahoo!'s products on several markets. As his actions had no visible repercussions on the decisions taken by the topside of the company, the investor started a proxy fight and he was determined to replace the largest part of the current board of directors with his right-hand men.
Just before the annual elections, Yahoo!'s executives and Icahn had reached a settlement, according to which, in return for three seats in the executive board, the investor "would forget" about the Microsoft acquisition friction. Now that the shares dropped to such an unprecedented low, the company seems the perfect target for other acquisition proposals, and perhaps Microsoft itself will come back with a bid, but we have to wait a while longer to see the outcome.