“It looks like Yahoo is considering selling its core business,” Jay Somaney writes for Forbes. “At least that’s what the chatter is today. The Board of Directors at Yahoo are going to be in meetings over the next few days to decide on whether a sale of everything at Yahoo (except its Alibaba stake, aka Aabaco) would make the most sense from a shareholder perspective.”
“Bob Peck, the internet analyst at SunTrust lists the following companies as potential buyers for Yahoo’s core internet business: Comcast, AT&T/DirecTv, Verizon/AOL, Disney, Newscorp and the larger P/E firms,” Somaney writes. “Peck estimates that the core business of Yahoo could bring in $6-$8 billion.”
“My wild idea? I think Apple should take out the entire company, core and Alibaba stake and the kitchen sink as well thrown in for good measure,” Somaney writes. “With the Alibaba stake, Apple could enter the Middle Kingdom in an even bigger way for all its various ecosystem initiatives not to mention all of its hardware. Who better to partner with in China than Alibaba which has the Chinese government as its godfather.”
MacDailyNews Take: And then Marissa Mayer heads up Apple’s new Search initiative, taking on Google, which spurned her, for real this time?
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer (photo: Art Streiber)Hey, we’re just spitballin’ here!
And, as an added bonus, Apple would have two legitimate, bright, very capable female CEOs in the executive suite should Tim Cook ever decide to ride off into the sunset. While that might cause some real issues, it also might not, seeing as Ahrendts is right around the same age as Cook (both are currently 55; she’s five months older). If Cook retired early, Ahrendts would be there to take over the reins and Mayer, who’s fifteen years younger, would be “on deck.”It’s always good to have backups, some sort of succession plan, at least implied, see the market’s reaction in the early days, months, and years after Steve Jobs’ cancer diagnosis was made public.
