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Yahoo Shareholders Pushing New Microhoo Plan

BoomTown writer Kara Swisher reports that Carl Icahn and his band of angry Yahoo shareholders are urging Microsoft to buy 33% of Yahoo, including the search unit that Microsoft so dearly covets, for $30-$32 per share. Previously, Microsoft had offered to buy 1/6 of Yahoo and all of search for $35. As Swisher says, such a move would effectively give Microsoft control over Yahoo.

Apparently, Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock finally wised up to pressure from Icahn and the angry shareholders, who have seen their stock plummet from $30 per share at the start of the Microsoft takeover talks to $22, and is now backing a deal. Meanwhile, Silicon Alley Insider's Henry Blodget says that "Jerry Yang and Sue Decker would likely be toast" under the new plan.

 

Other noteworthy tidbits from Swisher's report: it will cost Yahoo $250 million to back out of the deal it signed with Google two weeks ago, News Corp. could somehow be brought into the deal, two dissident board members may resign, and Microsoft may be forced in the end to pay more than the $1 billion it proposed previously for Yahoo's search assets. Of course, at the end of the report, she notes that no formal talks have taken place. Meanwhile, Blodget says the likelihood that Yahoo would accept a deal like the one above is high.

Read the whole story at D: All Things Digital »

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