Microsoft Offers $44.6 Billion to Buy Yahoo!
February 2, 2008
Microsoft has pounced on slumping Internet icon Yahoo Inc. with an unsolicited takeover offer of $44.6 billion in its boldest bid yet to challenge Google Inc.’s dominance of the lucrative online search and advertising markets.
To underscore its resolve, Microsoft is offering a 62 percent premium to Yahoo’s closing stock price Thursday. If the deal is consummated, it would be by far the largest acquisition in Microsoft’s history, eclipsing last year’s $6 billion purchase of online ad service aQuantive.
While the tech world waits to see whether Yahoo will accept Microsoft’s $44.6 billion takeover bid, Microsoft and Yahoo employees must be losing some sleep at the prospect of massive staff cuts sould the takeover become a reality.
There’s a lot of duplication between Yahoo and Microsoft’s internet arms and services will shut and/ or be downsized as content and services from each cross-pollinate across the merged entity.
