Tired of watching Yahoo sit on its laurels, refusing Microsoft’s stubborn $44.6 billion advance? (The offer is now valued at $41.6 following a drop in MSFT’s market price.) Fed up with Microsoft’s exhaustive threats? Want to see some real action? You’ll have to wait some more. According to a story by Andrew Ross Sorkin and Miguel Helft of The New York Times, “Yahoo’s board met Friday to evaluate Microsoft’s takeover bid...(and authorized) the company’s management to continue meeting with Microsoft and with Time Warner. Both are expected to be scheduled for next week.”
If you’re following the countdown to judgement day, Yahoo still has about 14 days or so until Ballmer goes proxy on Yang’s ass. Or perhaps Redmond will rescind the offer complete. Who knows. They’ve dug into this matter so deeply (and so publicly) over the past couple of months that it’s actually quite difficult to decipher whether a complete pull-out would do very significant damage to YHOO and/or MSFT, enough to force the acquisition through, if only begrudgingly. Both parties are mired so heavily in this thing, and there’s no telling what, given the change that the deal goes through, Microsoft will do with its $44.6bn catch in the way of merging properties and so forth. We seem to be in really weird place. Should they cut their losses? Cross their fingers and sign signatures? No doubt this is a very unpleasant situation for all. Even for us here out on the sidelines.