back to article Cancel! that! yacht! order! Marissa! – Verizon's! still! cold! on! Yahoo! gobble!

A Verizon executive is once again casting doubt on the telco giant's $4.8bn bid to acquire Yahoo! Speaking at an investor conference in Las Vegas today, executive vice president Marni Walden said of the deal, "Unfortunately, I can't sit here today and say with confidence one way or the other because we still don't know." The …

  1. a_yank_lurker

    Walk a way

    The Putrid Palace has no real value to Verizon. At best they pick up a some active email accounts, some websites, and few engineers. Verizon seems to follow a strategy of merging for the sake of merging.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Walk a way

      Verizon seems to follow a strategy of merging for the sake of merging.

      M&A is the executive equivalent of scratching your arse. Its what you do when you can't think of anything else, or when you're trying to actively avoid something horrible (like the hard work of running a real, profitable, customer focused company).

      Verizon aren't unusual - I work for a company that has squandered about twenty billion euros on M&A with no tangible benefits at all, other than a matching amount of debt on our balance sheet.

  2. ecofeco Silver badge

    Oh they fucking know

    "Unfortunately, I can't sit here today and say with confidence one way or the other because we still don't know."

    Oh they know. If you think they don't know, I've got a very nice bridge for sale. Gently used, of course.

    They just aren't telling anyone which tells me there is something fishy going on.

    1. Nate Amsden

      Re: Oh they fucking know

      I don't think they know. Verizon wants one(get out or get a much cheaper price) thing yahoo wants another(stick to the deal). Sounds like the contract to buy didn't have enough legalese to settle the situation.

      I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up in court. Kind of surprised it hasn't already. I assume because both companies fear losing control over the situation by handing a decision to a 3rd party.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Oh they fucking know

        Not a lawyer, so I have to ask. Can a contract legally be forced to be renegotiated or voided if certain drastic contingencies occur? Can such "start over" clauses be placed into contracts legally?

        1. C Montgomery Burns

          Re: Oh they fucking know

          Not having has seen the contract, it would be typical to have opt-out language to allow for a serious material non-disclosure by a party. From Verizon's point of view, failing to mention theses breaches could be seen as such a thing.

          Also not a lawyer.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Topsy turvy world

    Yahoo stock was $15 in 2012 when Mayer became CEO, and is $40+ now, so by Wall St standards, yes, she has been an *excellent* CEO and well deserving of big bucks. Can't begrudge her that.

    As to what Yahoo does that is worthy of any value, I am still scratching my head. If producing something of value in my universe was the criteria, they would be a penny stock.

    1. Charles 9

      Re: Topsy turvy world

      "As to what Yahoo does that is worthy of any value, I am still scratching my head. If producing something of value in my universe was the criteria, they would be a penny stock."

      But then again, by that perspective there are infinite universes. They just need to be valuable to enough of them for your assessment to not really matter.

    2. JamesSmith1

      Re: Topsy turvy world

      The stock went up despite her, not because of her. That was 100% AliBaba Investment which she had NOTHING to do with. It really annoys me when people who have no understanding of the situation make such comments.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Topsy turvy world

        "The stock went up despite her, not because of her. That was 100% AliBaba Investment ...."

        Yes, but the original poster added the qualifier "By Wall Street standards...."

        I think by that criterion, he may be right.

  4. Hans 1
    Happy

    Verizon wants a better deal, yahoo have no choice ... Verizon can get Yahoo for under $1bn, all it takes is time .... they could say that given the security issues, they are not sure they trust yahoo staffers, the share price plummets to $10 and they slurp it up.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    Where's the value?

    Surely all the remaining Yahoo! users must be idiots who can't be monetized

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Where's the value?

      We live in strange times.

    2. C Montgomery Burns

      Re: Where's the value?

      I have had a Yahoo account for a decade that I have faithfully logged into maybe once a year or so. It's an email to give out to places when I don't want to get spam in my main email. What do you think the cash value of me as a user is?

    3. ratfox

      Re: Where's the value?

      In fact, the Yahoo core business has indeed repeatedly been estimated to have a negative value. For a long time, if you added up the shares of Alibaba and (independent) Yahoo Japan owned by Yahoo, you would get more than Yahoo's market cap... Which meant that the core business (even though it was still profitable) had a negative value.

      I don't feel like doing the computation, but I believe this is still the case today.

    4. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

      Re: Where's the value?

      Yahoo! still owns a sizable chunk of Alibaba which (on paper) is worth far more than Yahoo! itself.

      Might be interesting for a company that wants into the Chinese market, or hedge against Chinese competition, or just cash in.

      My guess is that Verizon know that they want Yahoo!, but also they want it cheap.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Where's the value?

      "Surely all the remaining Yahoo! users must be idiots who can't be monetized"

      But - organ donation?

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