The epistolary sparring between Yahoo and Microsoft resumed over the weekend, with Microsoft issuing a letter on Saturday threatening a proxy battle to oust Yahoo's board should the members not accept Microsoft's purchase bid, and with Yahoo responding in kind by reiterating that it long-since rejected Microsoft's offer as inadequate.
All it wants, Yahoo's board replied, is a fairer (i.e., more lucrative) offer.
The companies crafted their messages for public appeal. Microsoft, in a letter signed by CEO Steve Ballmer, implies the no-more-Mr.-Nice-Guy stance it is adopting is its only recourse given that Yahoo has been refusing to even meet to negotiate.
Yahoo's response, signed by CEO Jerry Yang, paints Microsoft as an unreasonable aggressor, pointing out that it has explained in detail why Microsoft's offer is too low, and that given Microsoft's falling stock price, the offer is now even lower than it initially was.
Furthermore, Yahoo wrote, its executives have met with Microsoft thrice – and on two of those occasions Ballmer himself was in attendance.
Microsoft gave Yahoo a deadline of April 26 to accept its original offer. If Yahoo does not, Microsoft said it will launch a hostile takeover at an even lower price.
"We are not opposed to a transaction with Microsoft if it is in the best interests of our stockholders," Yang says in the letter. "Our position is simply that any transaction must be at a value that fully reflects the value of Yahoo, including any strategic benefits to Microsoft, and on terms that provide certainty to our stockholders."
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