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.

The pertinent question that remains is whether the acquisition will enable Microsoft to snatch the online services monopoly from Google whose popularity is deeply entrenched in the virtual world with the word ‘google’ entering dictionaries worldwide. With Yahoo retaining around 17% of the online market share, the combined share of Microsoft and Yahoo is far behind Google’s 77% market share. In fact, Microsoft has been trying for nearly two years since late 2006 to make Yahoo agree to its merger proposal. After considerable dillydallying, the reluctant Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang is believed to be considering the proposal from Microsoft CEO Steven Ballmer with all seriousness. Plummeting equity prices seem to have unnerved Yahoo.

What remains to be seen is Google’s reaction to the news of this grand acquisition. Current scenario does not seem that the company will become jittery from any combined move by Yahoo and Microsoft.

Source:IHT

Under this revised deal, JP Morgan would purchase 95 million newly issued Bear Stearns shares. The New York Times reported that Bear’s board of management has also agreed to this new offer. John Augustine, chief investment strategist with Fifth Third Investment Advisors was noted as saying that JP Morgan has had this deal sewn up right now. The new offer puts Bear Stearns at a value of about $2.1 billion, much more than the $236 million which it was valued at under the initial deal. Representatives of Bear, JP Morgan and the Fed were not immediately available for comment.

The revised deal has financial backing from the Federal Reserve. This would raise concerns about the US government’s ability to rescue Wall Street bankers while millions of homeowners face the possibility of foreclosure.

Bear has recently been ranked as the fifth-largest U.S. investment bank but that ranking took a downturn as large subprime mortgage losses and falling confidence in the company prompted a run on the bank. The finalization of this new deal is vital to JP Morgan as this would serve as encouragement to banks and other customers that they can do business with Bear safely yet again. Bear’s liabilities were tightened by JP Morgan and it agreed to back all of Bear’s prime brokerage contracts and all of its short- and long-term loans.

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Via BBC

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.

Although in view of the statements made by Yahoo’s Board of Directors suggested that the bid did not matched up to Yahoo’s expectations but did not hinted on a value for the same. In lieu of this it was communicated that Yahoo’s turning down the offer was a step towards maximizing the profits for the investments in Yahoo by its stockholders. It also seems willing to stand again in the emerging industrial market and competitive environment.

But it is yet not known if Microsoft will continue to brace itself up in this protracted struggle to acquire Yahoo. But it is also speculated that Microsoft will be taking steps to increase the bid value to $5 billion and increase the share value to $40 per share, but it still very unprecedented. Acquiring a titan of the business world does not seem to be an easy affair; rather it will take another titan like Microsoft to merge with a rival competitor on a much bigger scale than the present stipulated bid. In the face of this it is about time that another gargantuan bid will definitely accomplish the task of acquiring Yahoo. The only thing it is to see is when and who will do this

Source: USA Today

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.

After the deal the main situation that comes out shows Thomson’s shares fell 2.5 percent to 34.66 dollars in New York while Reuters’ US-traded shares fell 0.3 percent to 72.19. It is also coming in the ears that David Thomson, the CEO of Thomson and grandson of founder Roy Thomson will be chairman of the combined firm i.e. Thomson Reuters Corporation and Reuters CEO Tom Glocer will be chief executive of the combined Thomson Reuters.

Sources say that Richard Harrington, the president and CEO of Thomson, plans to retire after the deal and is positively looking towards it and said that the deal has given them a global footprint which they never had in their own company. This is also being said that the combination of the two is going to be tremendously good for the shareholders.

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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.

It was courtesy of the innovation in search, ads and applications that increased the earnings for Google as per CEO Eric Schmidt. Incidentally it is also for the first time that the company has managed to have more sales abroad with 51%, a partial reason for which was the slump in the dollar value eventually increasing the value of the earnings outside the US. This news has also given a breather to the Google officials who were worried of deteriorating sales on account of slowdown in online advertising. Google is currently the fifth biggest company in the US by market capitalisation.

With the US economy on a further downswing it would be interesting to see how the sales report for the second quarter shape up for Google. Considering the present slump not really affecting them, it could see a further rise in profits in the next quarter ending in June.

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In the share market business, there’s no telling when things might go wrong. The latest news is the fall of global stocks along with the downfall of Goldman Sachs. The profit percentage went down by as much as 7%! Currently, it projected about $15bn in losses.

Along with the Goldman, shares throughout the world took a nose dive. The Dow Jones average dropped about 217.86 points. The Nasdaq went down about 1.33%. So, the situation in the global stocks and shares is critical. Further on, the London FTSE lost 170.4 points. So, it is clear that the fall of Goldman Sachs led to the previously mentioned losses.

Along with the fall of global shares, panic struck the share market. The Citigroup bank associated with Global Sachs went down as well. The Citigroup is expected to sell between $8 and 11 bn in write downs! With the consumer metrics going down, the Citigroup is going through some bad times. The banking industry giant is lacking good leadership in these troubled times.

As a matter of fact, Goldman Sachs advised the investors in the Citigroup financial sell their shares. When trading closed, the Citigroup shared went down by 5.9%. I think this is probably the first time I am witnessing this kind of loss. The primary concern for shareholders is the wider damage this situation has caused. Companies like GM reported major financial loss as well. Also, the US economy in general is suffering due to Citigroup and Goldman Sachs deal. Hopefully things will get better soon.

Image Credit: shsweb
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The Mubadala Development Company has received 49 million newly issued shares at $12.70 a share, the closing price of AMD share on Thursday. As a part of the deal, Mubadala will also get a seat in the AMD board.

The news had little effect on AMD stocks, which had already declined to a 52-week low from $23 in December, last year. These days AMD is striving to maintain its market share gains while it is facing a tough competition from the world’s leading chipmaker Intel. Intel is busy reorganizing and reworking the fundamental design of its chips. AMD claims that it currently controls a fifth of the market for chips used to power personal computers with Intel controlling the rest.

Whether the new investment will provide any long time relief to AMD is yet to be seen. According to analysts, though AMD’s sale of personal computers is strong but its expenses continue to be high.

Source:New York Times
Image:cnet

The assumption held by experts regarding Indian business’s latest fad for ‘joint ventures’ following TATA’s example has once again been proved. Praj Industries following latest mantra of various business honchos has tied up with Brazil’s Jaragua Equipments Industries resulting in a new joint venture company named Praj Jaragua Bioenergia S.A.

54 per cent stake of the venture will be with Praj while the rest with Jaragua. According to industry experts, the venture will offer a smooth entry to Praj into an otherwise growing market of ethanol.

Praj’s Chairman Pramod Chaudhari, while talking to reporters stated that the formation of new company shows the commitment on their part to Brazil’s ethanol market. He added further that the company would be looking for a long haul in Brazil. He affirmed that the new formed company would continue to work closely with Brazilian customers with the aim set in enhancement of performance of various plants as well as return on investments.

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Almost a year back, ‘Six Apart’ allowed SUP to manage Live Journal in Russia under a licensing agreement. This acquisition will allow SUP to gain on a global scale. Under SUP, Live Journal has scaled new heights in Russia. The details of deal haven’t been disclosed yet.

However, from an investment point Six Apart will remain involved with LiveJournal for at least next 12 months. SUP plans to hold a new advisory board. Meanwhile, Six apart plans to focus and improve its other blogging tools!

Source: Mashable

Alphasat will enable us to offer improved services through greater capacity, better quality communications and faster download times to existing and future Inmarsat customers.

Evert Dudok, CEO of Astrium said,

Astrium is proud to be have been chosen to implement this ambitious satellite programme that will demonstrate a large number of innovations, both at platform and payload level, and position Astrium firmly as a world leader for mobile satellite communications technology.

The satellite Alphasat I-XL, will support a new generation of mobile technologies and enable communications across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

Via: BBC