13 posts and columns on Deal Journal

Dealpolitik: Yahoo’s Survival Plan

in News on December 2, 2011 at 4:00 am PT

Yahoo is adrift and the sharks are circling. It needs to do something. It’s not clear how any of the “somethings” the board is reportedly reviewing have any relationship to a fundamental business strategy. But there seems to be no dispute that “something” needs to get done. It’s not a good position to be in.

Qualcomm Makes It Official, Grabs Atheros for $3.1 Billion

in Enterprise on January 5, 2011 at 8:42 am PT

The wireless chipmaker clocks in with the first major tech deal of the year. Atheros shareholders are happy today.

Citibank's Snafu Over Gay Site Looks Familiar

in News on February 26, 2010 at 9:40 am PT

Citibank apologized Thursday evening to a gay social-networking service that claimed bank employees had blocked its account for “objectionable content” on the site.

Razorfish-Publicis: And the Digital Walls Come Tumbling Down

in News on August 10, 2009 at 3:30 pm PT

The prevailing wisdom has been that the important word in ‘digital advertising agency’ wasn’t the advertising as much as it was the digital. Technology was king. That has all changed, as seen in two deals in the past week.

Parsing Words in the Tussle Over Nortel

in News on July 17, 2009 at 2:14 pm PT

Here is a good rule of thumb in M&A: Be careful what you say in public. The joint venture Nokia Siemens appears to be learning this lesson the hard way this week, after its North American Operations president, Sue Spradley, was quoted as saying it would be interested in buying “other” assets of Toronto telecommunications-gear maker Nortel Networks, which filed for bankruptcy-law protection in January.

Afternoon Reading: Yahoo's Got That Urge to Merge Again

in News on May 21, 2009 at 2:06 pm PT

Yahoo isn’t just selling, it is looking to buy, too. The Internet web search and ad company’s chief technology officer, Ari Balogh, told the Reuters Global Technology Summit that Yahoo is looking to buy companies that will enable it to become a bigger player in social networking and revamp its family of products.

Why Frontier Will Escape the Curse of the Verizon Deal

in News on May 15, 2009 at 6:55 am PT

Should Verizon Communications deals come with a warning label? In the past few years, the telecommunications company has been shedding slow-growth businesses as it focuses on its wireless and FiOS businesses. While the deals have served Verizon well, they haven’t worked out as well for those acquiring the assets–at least in three cases.

KKR, Warburg, Providence and Elevation Surface in Skype Bid

in News on April 14, 2009 at 9:31 am PT

A quartet of private-equity firms have joined forces for a leveraged buyout of a global telecommunications firm with hundreds of millions of users. And no, this isn’t a blog post from 2006.

Mean Street: Salesforce.com–How Much Higher Can It Go?

in News on July 30, 2008 at 1:44 pm PT

If you are a believer in efficient markets, every now and then a hot tech stock comes along that pushes your conviction to its limits. VMware was bought for $625 million by EMC in 2004, went public in 2007 and soon hit a market cap of $48 billion. It currently trades at about a quarter of that value. Even the hottest stock can’t defy gravity indefinitely. Or can it?

From the Department of Correcting "Crazy Google/Yahoo Rumors"

in News on February 28, 2008 at 12:42 am PT

To: Rumormongers From: BoomTown Re: Wacky–even by Google standards–stock market schemes Google (GOOG) –let me get this straight–is apparently considering buying just under 20% of Yahoo (YHOO) shares at some elevated price, according to a post on TechCrunch yesterday, “although the goal isn’t so much to close the deal, which would almost certainly be opposed [...]