After firing CEO, Yahoo puts itself up for sale

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  •  Dec 12, 2013
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What is the road ahead for Yahoo! The board seems eager to sell the company, but can they find any buyers?

After growing impatient with the lack of a turnaround, the Yahoo board has ousted its Chief Executive, Carol Bartz, in what is reported to be a unanimous decision. Tim Morse, Yahoos CFO, has taken over on an interim basis. According to sources, the board is exploring a range of possible strategies to turn around the companys moribund growth. The possible options include acquisitions, shedding units, bringing in new investment partners and even taking the company private or selling it.

It has also been reported that Yahoo is preparing to hire investment bankers and other strategic advisory firms, as it seeks to figure out what to do next at the company. Given the fact that there is no clarity about buyers, a sale is least likely of the options. However, after todays announcement Yahoo is likely to attract a lot of attention from investors seeking to take advantage of the companys powerful but troubled assets. Soon after Carol Bartzs exit was reported, Yahoo's stock jumped more than 6% to $13.72 in after-hours trading.

Yahoo has had a long history of failed CEOs - Terry Semel, Jerry Yang and Bartz. Some analysts have started saying that in the present state Yahoo is simply not governable. The company does manage to get a huge traffic due to strategic properties like Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports and Yahoo News, but it is clearly struggling to find an identity at a time when consumers are spending more and more time on social networking sites and mobile devices.

Yahoo has also been facing pressures to monetize its investments in Yahoo Japan and Alibaba Group. The company might no longer be able to resist exercising that option; only thing is that the valuation of properties like Alibaba might not be good enough considering the current market scenario. It is also possible that Yahoo might get taken over by Microsoft. Microsoft is already providing lot of search options to Yahoo. Another option could be a merger between Yahoo and AOL. The third option is that Yahoo could resort to selling itself in bits and parts.

However, the first priority for the company will be to conduct a CEO search. This is going to be difficult because Yahoo has already acquired the reputation of being a tough company to govern.

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