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Cramer on BloggingStocks: Two guys stalled the Yahoo! deal

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says Filo and Yang own less than 10% of Yahoo! shares, so they can stall a deal but not stop it.

Two guys with less than 10% of the shares outstanding blocked this Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) (Cramer's Take) deal -- Jerry Yang and David Filo. I understand this logic. They are founders. They probably hate Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) (Cramer's Take). They feel tremendous pride. They think that surrendering to Microsoft would be like giving in to the Evil Empire.

But if they felt that, they should never have brought the company public. Once you are public you are for sale, either in pieces or all together, unless you have one of those travesty two-classes-of-stock configurations that I think shouldn't even be allowed and have almost always been disappointing.

So what happens? I think the stock acted very well yesterday. It should have been down more. I think what happened is that arbs looked at the holders and realized that if they bought up enough stock that was for sale they could force a sale or a new board of directors. Might take a year, but if you can buy something at $24 and sell it at $34 a year from now, well, let's just say that is a big win.

Continue reading Cramer on BloggingStocks: Two guys stalled the Yahoo! deal

Option update 2-1-08: Microsoft volatility flat into proposed acquisition of YHOO

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) proposed the acquisition of Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) for $31 per share.

The transaction is valued at approximately $44.6 billion in cash and stock. MSFT's offer is payable in $31 cash or 0.9509 per share of MSFT.

MSFT is recently trading down 85c to $31.75 in pre-open trading.

MSFT overall option implied volatility of 27 is near its 26-week average of 26 according to Track Data, suggesting non-directional risk.

Option Update is provided by Stock Specialist Paul Foster of theflyonthewall.com

Sony (SNE) says PS3 had good holiday sales

Sony (NYSE: SNE) said that sales of its troubled PS3 picked up over the holidays, selling 1.3 million units in North America. According to The Associated Press, this increased "the strength of the company's Blu-ray video format because the console also works as a Blu-ray player."

Perhaps that is part of the reason that the PS3 has not done better than its rivals, the Nintendo Wii and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT)'s Xbox 360. Is the PS3 a Trojan Horse for Sony's HD video strategy or is it a game platform?

Part of the problem in selling the PS3 has been what the consumer had to pay to play. Until the recent price cuts, it was more expensive than the Xbox 360 and twice as costly as the Wii. This almost certainly undermined unit sales. Without a Blu-ray player as part of the hardware, the game console could probably have had a cost base which was much lower.

Sony may have hurt the ongoing marketing of its gaming product by "mixing" it with the company's plans to dominate high-definition content playback. The PlayStation was once the consumer electronics company's flagship and was highly profitable. Now the game unit loses money.

Sometimes two goals from one company put into a single product just creates a mess.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Symbol Lookup
IndexesChangePrice
DJIA+29.8811,632.38
NASDAQ+21.922,325.88
S&P 500+5.191,282.19

Last updated: July 24, 2008: 05:06 AM

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