Ahead of market expectations Yahoo! Inc. would officially reject a $44.6 billion bid from Microsoft Corp., a group of Yahoo! shareholders began a campaign to convince the search engine company to seek the highest offer possible.
Various press reports over the weekend said that Yahoo! would ask Microsoft to lift its offer to at least $40 per share from the $31 per share bid it revealed last Monday. At $40 per share, the bid would be worth roughly $67 billion.
Some press reports added that the only company with the financial strength to make a competing bid would be Google Inc., and antitrust concerns would likely prevent it from bidding. However, The Times of London on Monday said Yahoo! may restart merger talks with Dulles, Va.-based AOL LLC, a division of Time Warner Inc. The paper said Yahoo! and AOL had previously tried to join forces, but were unable to agree on the price of a deal. It also said Yahoo! was considering a deal with Walt Disney Co. of Burbank, Calif.
Against this backdrop, a group called Yahoo Plan B is working to convince shareholder to sell out to whichever group comes out with the best offer. The group's Web site says the group consists of 100 current and former Yahoo! employees who own 2.1 million shares. The group said it plans to vote as a bloc and will negotiate separately with Microsoft or any other bidder, according to a blog by the group's founder, Eric Jackson.
"We have no desire to see Yahoo! continue independently with the current board and management team in place,'' says the blog. "We believe that is a recipe for a $17 stock price. Therefore, we will band together as a group and agree to sell our Yahoo! shares to the highest bidder.''
The group, whose primary aim has been to replace Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo! chairman and CEO Terry Semel and other directors, aims to to amass a stake of 10% in the company so its concerns will be voiced as the largest group.
Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft, the world's largest software company, proposed the purchase as a means of challenging the search engine dominance of Mountain View, Calif.-based Google. Google has attacked the union, suggesting the software giant is trying to monopolize the Internet just as it has the market for PC operating systems. - Olaf de Senerpont Domis
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