14 DAY TRIAL // Jerry Yang, CEO of Yahoo!, is not really at ease with the never-ending story of the company's acquisition. While Carl Icahn, the investor who started a proxy fight in order to determine the replacement of the current board of directors - which is unwilling to accept Microsoft's offer -, is in talks with the Redmond company, Yang is striking back. "To trust Mr. Icahn and his board is really a bad choice", stated the current CEO for The Wall Street Journal.
In Yang's opinion, the investor is not reliable, since, although he is not an active member of the board, he carries on and engages in discussions that can lead to Yahoo!'s dissolution. "Now Mr. Ballmer [Microsoft's CEO] and Mr. Icahn have teamed up in an apparent effort to force Yahoo! into selling to Microsoft its Search business at a price to be determined in a future 'negotiation' between Mr. Icahn's directors and Microsoft's management. We feel very strongly that this would not lead to an outcome that would be in the best interests of Yahoo!'s stockholders," Yang said, trying to add some icing on the cake, especially considering the imminence of the elections that could radically change the executive board.
"I think that I can bring stability back to Yahoo!, and I want to get on with building company," Yang told the Wall Street Journal reporters. For the time being, the company isn't on the safest ground since the negotiations with Microsoft are constantly going back and forth. The price of Yahoo!'s shares have dropped and gained strength again, in conformity with the moves of the Redmond company.
Needless to say, in most of the areas of activity, competitors have overcome the giant. This led to something that would have been hard to believe a while ago. The Yahoo!-Google agreement, that allows the latter company to display ads amongst Yahoo!'s search results was a give-and-take that underscores the trouble the Sunnyvale corporation got into.