By ReutersInformationWeek
The software maker released the 10 nominees from their
commitments to the company, the source said Thursday,
indicating Chief Executive Steve Ballmer was firm in his
resolve to pull back rather than mount a proxy fight.
Microsoft withdrew its $47.5 billion bid for Yahoo last
weekend after the two sides failed to agree on price.
"The market may wish that the Yahoo deal may come back
together, but Microsoft at least at this point assumes it's
over," Microsoft Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig
Mundie told Reuters in an interview in Jakarta.
Yahoo's stock, which plunged 15 percent Monday, has
partly rebounded on investors' expectations that a deal might
still be done. The stock closed up 58 cents, or 2.3 percent, at
$26.22 on Thursday, but shed 27 cents in after-hours trade.
By releasing the slate, Microsoft frees nominees to sign up
for other slates that may be assembled by Yahoo shareholders
upset over Chief Executive Jerry Yang's failure to seal a
deal.
Members of Microsoft's proxy board have been approached by
Yahoo shareholders weighing whether to nominate their own
alternative slates, the Wall Street Journal reported.
But analysts said there was only a very short window for
such shareholders to act, since any nominations must be made
before May 15. Yahoo has set its annual meeting for July 3.
"May 15, which is next week, is not enough time for some
other investor group besides Microsoft to put together a slate
of directors," said Shirley Westcott, a managing director of
policy at Proxy Governance, an independent advisory firm.
Dissident shareholder Eric Jackson, who leads a group of
investors with a combined 2 million Yahoo shares, said he has
been calling "lots of people in the last few days who might
serve on a slate" but refused to disclose names.
Although Microsoft never filed its proxy slate with
regulators, sources familiar with the matter have told Reuters
that the company had seriously entertained mounting a proxy
campaign before deciding to withdraw its offer for Yahoo.
Former Nextel Partners CEO John Chapple, former Grey Global
Group CEO Edward Meyer and Jaynie Studenmund, former chief
operating officer of Overture Services, which was acquired by
Yahoo, were among the nominees, according to news reports.
Microsoft declined to comment.
The company had sweetened its Yahoo bid to $33 per share
last week, hoping to combine forces to compete with Google Inc
in the growing Internet advertising market. But Yahoo
refused to go below $37, causing the talks to fall through.
Yahoo is under pressure from shareholders to come up with
an alternative deal, and had conducted a two-week test to
outsource Web search advertisements to Google.
Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said the test provided
good reason for the companies to discuss cooperation, but there
was no deal yet.
"We view the test as successful," Schmidt told reporters
before the Web company's annual meeting Thursday. "That's a
good basis to talk to Yahoo some more."
(Additional reporting by Ed Davies and Harry Suhartono in
Jakarta, Adam Tanner in San Francisco and Daisuke Wakabayashi
in Seattle; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Braden Reddall)
By: Anupreeta Das
Copyright 2008 Reuters. See original article on InformationWeek
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