Wall Street Looking To Continue Its Buy 'Em Up Then Break 'Em Up Strategy With Yahoo?

from the next! dept

In the past, we've joked about Wall Street's amazing ability to convince companies that they need to acquire each other and merge to bring out "synergies" and then convince those same firms to later break themselves up into separate companies to "release shareholder value." It's all part of the shell game, where the investment bankers on Wall Street get to take out their huge fees whether a company is being built up or broken apart. It looks like the latest such target may be Yahoo, as an analyst at Sanford Bernstein has kicked off the discussion by noting that the company could release shareholder value by breaking itself up into three companies. Which companies? Well, it would want to split up the search and the advertising parts of the business... you know, the same parts of the business that folks convinced Yahoo it needed to buy four years ago if it was going to successfully take on Google. Now, of course, the only way for it to successfully take on Google is to get rid of those businesses. Luckily, the folks on Wall Street will happily help with both ends of the transaction for a small significant fee. Sometimes I think I'm in the wrong business.
Hide this

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

Filed Under: acquistions, investment banks, mergers, spinoffs, wall street
Companies: sanford bernstein, yahoo


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  1. identicon
    Peters, 5 Oct 2007 @ 9:28pm

    You hit the nail on the head. Not only are these endless mergers and split-ups useless for anyone except investment bankers, they are soul-destroying for companies and their employees. First, a series of rapid-fire acquisitions, with no thought about cultural fit, long term retention of acquired employees and so on. Then when most such acquisitions (predictably) fail to generate value, go through lay-offs, spin-offs and so on, further destroying morale.

    Yahoo is a poster-child for such company abuse. They are acquiring approximately one company a month now, and most of them make no sense at all to me. Example: what the f**k do Yahoo Mail guys do for work, if they need Zimbra now? what the f**k do their own advertising teams do if they need a Blue Lithium - this is not to say those other companies are bad, just to point out that Yahoo has employees whose job was supposed to be to keep ahead in each of these areas.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Lucretious, 6 Oct 2007 @ 4:21am

    I blame "International Bankers".

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. Wall Street Looking To Continue Its Buy 'Em Up The

    I am so sad about what has been happening at Yahoo recently, a company that used to be the darling of the internet world. They have grown too rich and lazy. I don't think breaking it will help, instead it could help speed up its complete demise. What I suggest is retirement of all old staff, complete re-shuffling of all the staff and to bring in new and fresh blood.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    JustMatt, 8 Oct 2007 @ 8:04am

    Re: Wall Street Looking To Continue Its Buy 'Em Up

    "retirement of all old staff" Age Discrimination I tells ya!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    jaya2898, 18 Jul 2009 @ 12:40am

    Social networking

    I just see your blog about online money making system to be useful for me. I have a blog about money making online and advice me to get more ideas to improve my blogs.



    Make Money Online



    Free part Time Jobs



    Part Time Jobs

    link to this | view in thread ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.