Amazon, Microsoft Want to Buy, Buy, Buy!
Economic downturn? Recession? Job losses? Really? Sure, Seattle's housing market finally cooled a bit, but listening to business news this morning you'd be excused for thinking all this talk about a bad economy is a crock of shit, at least here in Seattle.
First there's Microsoft (via the PI):
Microsoft Corp. announced a bid to buy Yahoo Inc. for nearly $45 billion on Friday, pursuing a blockbuster deal that could reshape the Internet industry by combining the assets of the two technology icons for a battle against online search giant Google.
That's a massive 62 percent premium on Yahoo's stock price.
The deal is far from done at this point though.
First, while the takeover isn't exactly hostile, it's not likely to be welcomed either. Yahoo's board said they "will evaluate this proposal carefully and promptly in the context of Yahoo!'s strategic plans and pursue the best course of action to maximize long-term value for shareholders." Combined with the rejected offer for the company MS made last year, that basically means, "Uh, Yeah. We'll get back to you on that."
Then there's the little matter of the Justice Department, who we're pretty sure MS remembers. We know Justice remembers them: They "would be interested in looking at the competitive effects of the transaction," according to the P-I. If the deal goes through, we're pretty sure that for once, MS isn't the monopoly in the room.
They are too.
"Today, the market is increasingly dominated by one player who is consolidating its dominance through acquisition," Ballmer wrote in a letter sent to Yahoo's Board of Directors. HE didn't name names though so we're left wondering who that could be. Email your guesses to our gmail account.
One final note on the deal. As of Dec. 31, MS had $21 billion on hand. If the $44.6-billion sale goes through, apparently MS would have less cash on hand than it's had in years.
The MS offer positively squashed news of another Seattle takeover this morning. We had to turn to our daily dose of media news courtesy of Mediabistro to find out that Amazon is buying Audible for a paltry $300 million in cash.
The New York Times says the price is $11.50 a share or a 23 percent premium to the stock’s closing price on Wednesday.
Obviously, Amazon -- which has been building its download offerings for months now and recently introduced an e-reader (What was that called? Oh yeah, Kindle) that no one we know has seen in person but apparently has volume controls on the bottom -- has been planning this move for awhile, according to the Times. The purchase seems like a no-brainer to us.
While we don't listen to books, we do read them and a lot of blogs. If Amazon were to find some way of making it easier for us to read via screen more comfortably and finds a sane way to sell music for the Kindle, we may actually be interested in buying one.
MSFT currently down 2%
YHOO currently up 9%
AMZN currently down 3%
ADBL currently up 2%
For the record, we'll note that all those stock links all lead to Google Finance. We're just sayin'.
