Asides

Microsoft Talking to Little Company named Yahoo?

By The Prince ⋅ March 4, 2008 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

4 Mar 2008 - Take a look at this excerpt from a piece on Deal Journal. 

Today at a Morgan Stanley Technology Conference, Microsoft finance chief Chris Liddell brought up, completely voluntarily, the company’s bid for Yahoo. Here is the conversation between Liddell and Morgan Stanley technology analyst Mary Meeker, from an SEC filing:
MARY MEEKER: In our remaining minute, anything that you’d like to address that we’ve missed?
CHRIS LIDDELL: Well, no one asked me about Yahoo, which is interesting. But I’m sure everyone is vaguely interested in it. You know, their…"
MARY MEEKER: What was that? What was that?
CHRIS LIDDELL: Yeah. The small company that we’re looking to acquire. There is — there?s no fundamental news. I mean, the — you know, the company has not yet formally responded to our offer. So you’ve seen the same press reports we have in terms of their view of it. You know, we continue to look at our options, and that’s something that I’m incredibly systematic about. That’s something that we look at, those alternatives, every week on the basis of what’s happening in the external market: what the opportunities for us are both in our customer business and through acquisition. So, you know, we’ll continue to look at those alternatives as we go forward, but there’s no news, per se, on Yahoo.
We like Liddell’s understatement that people might be "vaguely" interested in Microsoft?s acquisition of a "small company." But, humor aside, Liddell’s comments don’t tell us about any talks. After all, Liddell only talks about a "formal" response. And what to make of his indication that he has heard about Yahoo’s opinion of the deal only in the media.