Everyone Is Buying Everyone As M&A Speculation Reaches Fever Pitch

from the buy-sell-buy-sell dept

Mon, May 7th 2007 2:35pm — Joseph Weisenthal

Last Friday, word of Microsoft and Yahoo possibly tying the knot gave everyone whiplash, as early rumors of a pending deal were quashed just a few hours later. Now, speculation about similar deals is building into a roar, as analysts toss about any and all possible merger combinations. Names that are being thrown about as possible Yahoo suitors include AT&T, Comcast, eBay, and (of course) Google. There doesn't seem to be much justification for any of these deals, but that doesn't seem to be the point. Wall Street wants to see deals, and individual analysts can raise their profile by making outlandish suggestions. The idea that Google might buy Yahoo seems the most absurd, since there's no reason for Google to buy the traffic that it's already taking for free on a monthly basis. But of course, these days no discussion of M&A is complete without mentioning Google, so the fact that someone would say it was inevitable. Another interesting angle on all of the buyout rumors is that some people are making serious money (via Om) on these short-term stock spasms, and it's not unreasonable to wonder whether the sources of these rumors have some ulterior motive. A very similar thing happened in March with Palm, as someone aggressively put out the word that the company would soon be bought out, sending the company's shares considerably higher. That too later proved to be false. Obviously, the media should be able to pass along rumors without being 100% sure of their veracity, but it would behoove news outlets to make sure that they're not simply getting played by interested parties.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

5 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

KR, 7 May 2007 @ 6:01pm

blog arms race
the media landscape is changing due to the strength and speed of blogs. in the race to scoop, unconfirmed rumors will be leaked via blogs. techcrunch got a nice deal of street cred when they scooped the youtube buyout. other bloggers seeing this halo effect are looking to have their own youtube scoop moment. the funny thing is that the yahoo merger rumor was fueled by the NY post, rather than the blogsphere.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
RandomThoughts, 7 May 2007 @ 6:47pm

What, no one saw the interview Jim Cramer gave on YouTube about how hedge funds game the market?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Jason Jenkins, 8 May 2007 @ 2:43am

.com's buying .com's
The great thing about todays tech M & A environment versus the late 1990's, is that larger internet companies are now in a financial position to acquire smaller .com's. I run a series of websites, abstract10.com, videostomp.com, contactlive.mobi, and videogavel. I have planned for years now to position these companies to simply be acquired by other .com's the we compliment versus an old media company like Viacom or Paramount.

[ link to this | view in thread ]
Thomas, 8 May 2007 @ 6:49am

The problem...
Is that the media is not able to verify M&A rumors before they either A. happen, or B. someone else reports the rumor. This is the same stuff that went down in Bubble1.0.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
M&A, 7 Oct 2007 @ 11:50am

M&A
M&A is seen,
[ link to this | view in thread ]