BUSINESS BLOGS
BUSINESS BLOGS
category: business
02 Aug 2008
related tags: Management | Investing | Yahoo! |

Sure, at $19.80 a share, Yahoo!’s shares now find themselves below even where they were on the eve of MSFT’s unsolicited $44.6B offer.  But make no mistake about it: Jerry Yang has won.

Don’t get me wrong, the first thing you learn in finance is that the objective of the financial manager is to maximize shareholder value.  But that misses one major point: up until this year, Jerry Yang was never the CEO (or CFO) of the company.  He was Chief Yahoo and a legendary figure in web history.  From the get-go, he and co-founder David Filo hired experienced managers to run the company and worry about the share price.

As a former shareholder who bought thousands of shares in the $20-25 range and ultimately sold my entire position in the $28-30 range, I won’t lie, I was displeased with Yang (and the entire Yahoo! board, that essentially “won” too by being voted back on).

But as a fellow entrepreneur, I give Yang a lot of credit and yes, respect, for proven to be resilient, persistent, tenacious and ultimately, hard headed enough not to listen to everyone (including me) who said “it’s over, YHOO is MSFT’s”.

Yang supporters - and MSFT denigrators” will argue that MSFT would have ruined YHOO, too.  But that’s all moot now.  YHOO is in bed with Google, Yang is in control… and having hinted at seeking to bring in former AOL chief Jon Miller to replace him - only to realize Miller was unavailable for at least one more year to a non-compete he signed with AOL upon his departure - Yang is in charge for some time to come.

Don’t get me wrong, Yang might very well seek a replacement anyway… and might very well do so now that he is in control, but that is the thing - Yang won the battle that he cared about: to retain control of an independent Yahoo!

Say what you want about all of this, but while it’s great to be aware of what others are telling you, remember that they are biased and have their own agenda.  To Yang - a billionaire many times over, born in Taiwan but now sitting on the most popular global web media brand - this is all icing on the cake… and sticking it to MSFT, Carl Icahn et al. the cherry on the icing.