Internet's second most popular search engine Yahoo has said it was open to selling itself to Microsoft, but the software giant's chief executive Steven A Ballmer and his deal makers were not keen to negotiate and ultimately withdrew their proposal.
"They (Ballmer and his aides) chose to walk away after we put a price on the table, and they didn't want to negotiate," Yahoo's co founder and chief executive Jerry Yang said in an interview published in the New York Times on Monday.
Microsoft had offered to buy Yahoo, second only to Google, for USD 31 a share, or USD 44.6 billion, in February, but the search engine felt it was worth more.
"From my perspective, we were open all along to selling to Microsoft. We just feel Yahoo, either stand-alone or with Microsoft, is worth more than what they put on the table," Yang told NYT.
But the paper says Yang's account conflicts with that of Microsoft's advisers and executives who have said that they received no counter offer from Yahoo for three months, after Microsoft's deadline to consummate the deal had expired. They also say that Yang and his board settled on a price of USD 37 a share and ultimately refused to budge.
Microsoft had raised its initial bid to USD 33 a share when Yang and his co-founder, David Filo, met with Ballmer and other Microsoft executives at the Seattle airport on Saturday. After that meeting, Ballmer made public a letter to Yang withdrawing the offer.
In the interview, Yang and Roy Bostock, Yahoo's chairman, said that throughout the process they were open and receptive to a merger with Microsoft.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/...ow/3015061.cms
More:
http://www.reuters.com/article/busin...89301120080506
http://www.news.com/8301-13953_3-993...ml?tag=newsmap
Yahoo trying to restart negotiations with MS?
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