Yahoo Inc Let the Bidding Begin!

The search engine giant will be meeting with the activist hedge fund Starboard this week to settle important matters.

The last resort to save Yahoo! Inc. was to save it. The CEO, Marissa Mayer is been packaging a secret deal which is not so secret, to sell the core business of the search engine giant. However, Ms. Mayer has been offering this deal provided she remains the CEO of the company, as per a report by The New York Post.

As per the Post’s news, this deal has been pitched by Frank Quattrone, who is a banker hired by Ms. Mayer additionally they still have not disclosed how many people are interested to buy the core business of the search engine corporation but according to the news, over 40 parties had shown interest to buy the core business of the giant.

Furthermore, the board of directors are expected to meet with the activist hedge fund Starboard Value during the current week. This meeting comes as no surprise as both the parties have been having conversation back and forth. The hedge fund has been on Yahoo’s case for a while not to shake-up its management so that the company comes out of this black hole.

According to a recent letter sent by Starboard to Yahoo, it requested for the dismissal of Marissa Mayer and stated to include majority of Starboard people in the board of the company. It was not as much of a request as a threat as they further stated that if the demands of the hedge fund are not met, they might start a proxy battle.

New York Post states that this could be the last nail in the coffin to start a proxy battle by Starboard. In addition to that, the CEO of Starboard Jeffery Smith has clearly stated that the company needs to be sold now. Due to these reasons, the board is not pondering over whether to include two or more people from the hedge fund to Yahoo’s board.

The turmoil in the search engine giant started ever since Marissa Mayer was made the chief executive officer of the company; however she has taken drastic measures to turnaround the fate of the organization ever since her appointment in July 2012. Those measures have always caused much displeasure to the shareholders of the business.

The CEO as part of a revamp plan made public that she had decided to keep the $30 billion stake in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd but had decided to sell the core web business. Furthermore, the plan includes cost-cutting procedures as well which of course include cutting down the workforce. As per the plan, the company has planned to lay off as many as 1,600 employees by the end of the current year.

Yahoo! Inc The Damsel in Distress

The search engine giant is failing on all levels; the CEO might have to step down.

In a recent post by the New York Post, it has come to the attention that the chief executive officer of the struggling company, Marissa Mayer has been looking for influential investors to whom she can sell her backup plan to for Yahoo! Inc. It does not come as a surprise that the CEO is looking for various ways to get the company out of the current disturbing situation it is in now.

As per the New York Post’s report, Marissa Mayer will be paying a visit to a number of ‘heavily backed’ financial firms and pitch her plans for the search engine company to them and see how it works out for her. She will be paying a visit to two of the hedge funds that hold big stakes in the search engine organization which include Millennium Partners and Mason Capital.

There has been quite a dispute between the board of the company and the CEO ever since she was given the position; she has always wanted to do things her way at Yahoo! Inc. and has kept the company in a transitional phase for a while not. It seems to many people, at this point that all she is going is buying herself sometime before the board points their fingers at her.

Both parties have taken help from outside – the CEO as well as the board. The Board has taken on board Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Evercore Partners for consultation as potential buyers of the company’s web business. On the other hand, the CEO had been asking for help from a Silicon Valley tech dealmaker, Frank Quattrone. Furthermore, the board has been consulting an independent committee to work on more strategic alternatives.

Mayer was appointed at the CEO of the giant back in 2012 – in a time span of three years, any company would have managed to establish a strategy for its business. In that time period, she has made numerous efforts to turnaround the company and brings better days to it. The pressure has been increasing on the CEO as investors believe that in these past few years, she could have easily managed to restructure the company.

Rumors have been circling around that Ms. Mayer might have to step down from her position as CEO of Yahoo soon enough – by March mostly likely – in case the situation does not get better by that time. On the other hand, the management of the company is making an effort to improve the mobile platform on the search engine organization.