Hello Company

No, despite its previous statement that it has “moved on” after being rebuffed by Yahoo!, in reaction to billionaire investor activist Carl Icahn’s request of taking over the Yahoo! board through hostile bidding, Microsoft remains as interested in acquiring Yahoo! as it was before. Microsoft has now disclosed that it was considering a deal with Yahoo!, which would not involve a full buyout of the company. Microsoft is keeping its fingers crossed. It is not willing to disclose the details of the new deal. It now remains to be seen what Jerry Yang does with the new deal.

The new deal is rather complex and would involve collaboration between Yahoo’s and Microsoft’s online advertising businesses without a complete takeover. It seems likely that Microsoft may later restart its merger negotiations, if the new deal succeeds. The time for the new discussion is crucial for both companies as Yahoo! is likely to announce its new partnership with Google sometime this week. With the Yahoo-Google partnership being subjected to antitrust scrutiny, any further collaboration with Yahoo! will not pay-off for Microsoft. To avoid any tussle with Carl Icahn, Yahoo! might decide to review its deal with Microsoft. The Microsoft-Yahoo saga is unfurling new dramas every day.

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Source: BBC

Most of us thought that the Yahoo-Microsoft saga is over while many were anticipating some covert tactics of hostile takeover of Yahoo by Microsoft. Proving both the groups wrong, the Yahoo-Microsoft saga has been revived from an unexpected quarter. Carl Icahn, the billionaire investor and activist shareholder has entered the picture with 50 million Yahoo shares worth over $1 billion in his kitty, in anticipation of acquiring a seat in the Yahoo board. Icahn wants to launch a proxy war that would eventually bring Yahoo to accept Microsoft’s offer for acquisition.

No amount of cajoling or coaxing made Yahoo accede to Microsoft’s demand for acquisition. Heartbroken, Microsoft has finally given up its plan to acquire Yahoo. It will instead tread a solitary path to achieve its goal of increasing its share in online advertising, albeit at a slower pace.

26 April 2008 was the deadline set by Microsoft for Yahoo to accept its $44.6 billion offer for acquisition. The unresponsive Yahoo made Microsoft threaten the company with a hostile take offer. However, with Yahoo remaining undeterred, Microsoft agreed to raise its offer by $5 billion to $47.5 billion or $33 per share. But Yahoo remained adamant and demanded $53 billion. A desperate chief executive of Microsoft Steve Ballmer in a letter to Yahoo chief executive Jerry Yang formally withdrew the offer in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders.

Microsoft seems to have lost its patience with Yahoo. It is contemplating a hostile bid for the company, if Yahoo! does not begin talks with Microsoft soon. The outlook of Microsoft had been clarified by its chief financial officer Chris Liddell after Microsoft witnessed an 11 percent drop in its third-quarter profit. However, despite of drop in profit, revenues of Microsoft however rose from $14.39 billion to $14.45 billion in the last three months. Microsoft had offered Yahoo! $44 billion for take over while Yahoo! is vacillating over the issue.

The first quarter results of the worlds most popular online search engine reveal that even the slowing US economy does not have an adverse effect on its revenue. Google was up by a 30% in the first quarter compared to last year as its first quarter profits rose to $1.31bn.

Even after the end of the Cold War and the rising US political and commercial hegemony, Russia is still nurturing its ambition to revive its former glory by becoming a major force to reckon with has become clear with the recent move by the state-controlled Gazprom’s foray into Libya. Gazprom, the largest producer of natural gas in the world has joined forces with Eni of Italy to pipe natural gas from Libya across the Mediterranean to Southern Europe. This move by Gazprom is aimed at controlling the gas supply routes to Southern Europe.

Libya has the fourth largest natural gas reserve in Africa after Algeria, Nigeria and Egypt. Besides Libya, Gazprom is trying to win production contracts in Algeria, which already supplies 13 percent of Europe’s total gas requirements. By creating a natural gas cartel, Russia would geopolitically surround Europe with its pipelines, further increasing its monopolistic hegemony in the European energy sector.

The Thomson Corporation, a preeminent provider of information solutions to business and professional customers globally has announced that its shareholders have overwhelmingly approved the proposed acquisition of Reuters Group PLC at a special meeting held on March 26, 08 in Toronto. 99% votes went in favor of the deal and cleared the way for winding up the deal on April 17, 08.

Reuters said that its shareholders approved the transaction by 92.6% at a meeting in London. This too is the biggest that happened in the history of the Canadian-based specialized data company. If the deal approves, then the new formation will be known as Thomson Reuters Corporation and their share of the world market for financial data will be one third, in competition against Bloomberg LP.

JP Morgan Chase & Co is in talks with Bear Stearns to quintuple its offer to buy Bear Stearns Cos to $10 per share in an effort to pacify angry Bear shareholders. JP Morgan raised its takeover offer for Bear Stearns Cos yesterday to about 5 times what it had originally quoted. A deal therefore was struck and JP Morgan is set to buy about 40% of the bank.

It seems that the tale of the tub has finally ended with Yahoo rejecting Microsoft’s offer of $44.6 billion at the end of the humongous affair that carried on for the past couple of weeks. The unsolicited bid was finally turned down by Yahoo and the status quo has again been preserved with Yahoo continuing to pose as a dominant competitor in the market of networking business.

The speculation concerning the fate of competition in view of the Yahoo and Microsoft’s merger has been mollified by this as it has again become evident that Yahoo is not willing to bend down on its knees in the face of adversity even if its is concerning a temptation of billions of dollars.

In the Troy of the internet networking industry, Yahoo seems to be the very sought after Helen, pursued by two titans, Microsoft and Google, one trying to convince her to marry and the other trying to deter that. The proposed alliance between Yahoo and Microsoft and now the open condemnation of Google and its unceasing efforts to restrain this alliance from becoming a reality has amounted to a Trojan War situation, the outcome of which seems to rely on the sole decision of Yahoo although the $44.6 billion bid would not be an easy bait to resist.

A twist in the story is currently being seen as Google is trying its best to convince Yahoo out of this stipulation giving the reason that it would pose serious threats to the competitive nature of the industry, its openness and innovation. Google is keeping a continuous watch over the situation and seems to be suggesting Yahoo, ways that would help it to resist the irresistible bid. This is suggestive of hypothetical alliances or some kind of partnership between the two with the help of AOL, as Google owns five percent of its shares.

Not being satisfied of its monopoly in the system software market, Microsoft wants to establish its hegemony in the online services sector also. Despite spending heavily on building its own search engine and advertising technology and even acquiring the online advertising specialist aQuantive for a whopping $6 billion, Microsoft’s online services has not been able to reduce the monopoly of Google. While Google retained 77% of the online services market pie Microsoft had a paltry 3.7% of the market share. To expand its market share the international giant has decided to work out policies of mergers and acquisitions and that with none other than another big name in the sector - Yahoo.

On Friday, Microsoft had announced that it is willing to offer $44.6 billion in cash and stock to Yahoo in what is being termed as the biggest ever acquisition by Microsoft. With Yahoo’s share prices closing at $19.18 on Thursday, the offer gives a 62% premium at $31 per share. Microsoft believes that the acquisition will increase their combined efficiency at reduced cost and saving $1 billion annually.

We might no longer see the Motorola mobile phones on the shop shelves as Motorola is considering quitting its mobile phone business. This might sound shocking news to many but to those aware of the financial condition of the American electronic company’s business will not be surprised by this move. Motorola’s mobile phone business is trailing behind the world leaders Nokia and Samsung with the company facing an 84% revenue loss in the last quarter of 2007.

The main reason of the slump in the mobile phone business is it could not compete with the cheap handsets especially from the Chinese manufacturers. The technology also is not suitable for multimedia activities demanded by the high-end users in America and Europe. By dissociating itself from the mobile phones business, Motorola will concentrate on its core business that includes radios, networking equipments and household electronics.

In the current scenario, pertaining to the private or for that matter the governmental organizations, downsizing, has become a prominent feature. Today, organizations prefer to reduce the size of the manpower employed in order to come at par with the escalations and de-escalations of the profits and losses of shares in the market.

In this competitive market, another key organization to come forward is the Yahoo! Inc., the epitome of the internet networking, which has decided to shrink down their workforce up to seven percent. This has come as a consequence to the twenty-three percent loss of profit in the fourth quarter of the year that has gone by. The loss in the value of Yahoo has come as the other companies like Google and MSN have entered the online advertisement business.

Yahoo incorporated this decision as a cautious strategy to come into terms with any such losses that can be hypothetically anticipated in the current year. But this in turn has led to a big scaling down of shares of this esteemed group, almost 10 percent of the amount that was earlier. This has led to the exhaustion of almost $35 billion shareholder wealth.

Parmalat SpA, the Italian dairy group that went broke about four years back, has reached a deal for an out-of-court settlement with the Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo. The private arrangement between the two companies, which was announced on Sunday, is worth 327 million Euros ($469.52 million).

The food group also reached simultaneous arrangements with Cariparma and Biberbanca (both are banking companies). These arrangements are worth 83 million Euros and 3 million Euros respectively. The out-of-court arrangements will mark the end of all lawsuits between the companies.

Parmalat had sued the banks for their alleged role in worsening its financial problems that eventually led to the group filing for bankruptcy protection in 2003. The charges were more specifically applicable to the use of credit to conceal company’s financial difficulties. The collapse of Parmalat and the associated companies under 14 billion Euros of debt was Europe’s biggest financial scandals at that time. It cost dear thousands of people who had invested in company’s bonds.

Renowned carmaker BMW announced Friday that it is planning to discharge thousands of workers as a step to combat increasing costs and rivalry from its competitors such as Mercedes. This action would mark the company’s first noteworthy layoff in a span of 10 years. BMW spokesman, Bill McAndrews declined to disclose the number of jobs that will be reduced until the beginning of next year. He however did not corroborate the Der Spiegel Internet version which had reported that BMW will liberate around 8000 workers.

Following several years of being the most flourishing carmaker in Germany, Bayerische Motoren Werke faced several losses in its business. The layoff will mainly focus on restoring profitability of the German company. In the recent past, there have been many other instances of such layoffs in Germany with General Motors eliminating several thousands of workers from its Mercedes, Volkswagen and Opel departments. BMW’s concern was to manufacture more number of cars without expanding payments. As BMW is enhancing its car production in the US, it is unlikely that US will be witnessing such a layoff.

According to BMW spokesman Bill McAndrews, many employees with provisional contacts with the Munich-based BMW will be affected as a result of this mass layoff. The company will be proposing voluntary buyouts and will also have a discussion with its unions to settle for more flexible working hours. He added, ‘This will be done with a BMW approach... It will be socially acceptable.’