
Starboard to Start Proxy Fight to Remove Yahoo’s Board - jackgavigan
http://www.wsj.com/articles/starboard-to-start-proxy-fight-to-remove-yahoos-board-1458789958
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chollida1
This is the equivalent of VC's throwing out the companies founders and
replacing them with someone else that the VC wants to run the company.

I think I've written the same comment about 4 times now, but Starboard is a PE
firm that knows what they are doing here. Nothing in life is certain, but I
doubt they would go activist in this way if they didn't have a very strong
feeling that they would get the required votes.

Their position is that under Mayer all Yahoo has done is lose money, with
their BABA position inflating their earnings to make YHOO look profitable.

I think most people believe that YHOO is now a walking zombie and will go
bankrupt given enough time, Starboard is attempting to short circuit this and
force a sale of the profitable assets, essentially returning money to
shareholders before the company goes under.

I mean anyone want to try to make the point that Yahoo as it exists can turn
around? I mean they've already tried layoffs, acquisitions, closing
unprofitable business units. What's left to try?

That's kind of shitty if you are an employee but to be fair, I haven't heard
anyone put out a believable plan that turns YHOO profitable and its hard to
ask existing share holders to essentially pay for people to have jobs until
their entire equity is gone.

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andy_ppp
Yahoo should be split up into lot's of possibly good companies and stop trying
to be a weird unsuccessful monolith. Then it might have a change of growing.

For example, when I worked on the Yahoo! homepage we made about 20 or 30
amazing modules (including personally implementing half of Facebook's
functionality in a module).

All of these modules were removed because people were actually using them and
consequently the rest of the Yahoo! network didn't get the expected foot fall
from the homepage.

Yahoo! as a company has been exploring a local maxima for a while and there is
no way for them to get out of it until they accept some pretty huge short term
losses. Artificial foot fall onto properties from the network prevents them
needing to be the best of breed; just being on the Yahoo network allows them
to be moderately successful businesses.

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btown
> removed because people were actually using them

Wait, so Yahoo leadership was optimizing _against_ user engagement? Sure, they
may not be monetized as well as other parts of the network, but that seems
like a ridiculously shortsighted decision. At this point, Yahoo's only growth
case is if it starts to gain mindshare, not just reapportioning the eyeballs
they already have...

~~~
gcb0
the other teams probably made a point that by showing your emails on the front
page the user would not have to click the ymail link and thus print two extra
ads. hence losing money.

what they get instead is less users overtime and lose progressively more. but
hey, someone did his job of driving ads up that quarter.

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kolbe
Starboard's lack of shame is both admirable and cringeworthy. They pursue
these attacks like they're Carl Ichan or Steve Schwartzman, but they're
nobodies with very little track record to speak of, and they don't even have a
very large stake in Yahoo to begin with (1.5%).

That's not to say they cannot have a good plan or great ideas, but they
haven't presented a viable plan yet, and they spend most of their efforts
attacking Yahoo management with very little substance.

~~~
FussyZeus
To be fair attacking Yahoo management isn't exactly difficult. If you open a
lemonade stand and sell someone a cup for $0.25, you've already made more than
Yahoo has in years.

~~~
gcb0
I'd like to invest in your 100s of million dollar profit lemonade stand,
please.

~~~
stephenitis
"unicorn lemonade" YC16!

~~~
FussyZeus
Would kickstart lemonade.

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josephpmay
I am normally anti-activist investors (my own company has poison pills up the
wazoo), but this seems like a sensible move for Yahoo. Their attempt to become
a media company has mostly failed, and from all accounts they seem lost. Yahoo
still has a number of valuable properties that could strive in the right
environment, and strip mining it would perhaps not be the worst idea.

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Animats
Well, somebody had to do this. Straight liquidation might be better than just
letting Yahoo throw away their cash.

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hnbroseph
ever since yahoo's activities concerning china and political dissenters [1]
(though this isn't the only reason to dislike them), i've never engaged with
their services. i admit to a bit of schadenfreude when coming across news of
any troubles they face.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Yahoo!#Outing_of_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Yahoo!#Outing_of_Chinese_dissidents)

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revel
Starboard telling us with action what they thought of Melissa Mayer's 3 year
plan

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dhimes
Serious question: What are Yahoo's _strengths_?

