Yahoo’s latest game plan is ripped by big investors

Canyon Capital Advisors, one of Yahoo’s 15 biggest shareholders, wrote to the board on 11 December urging it to find a buyer for the core internet business or the whole company.

Eric Jackson, managing director of SpringOwl Asset Management, a New York-based hedge fund, has sent Yahoo’s board a scathing review of the company’s management.

Jackson said he believes his plan will unlock billions of dollars of value in Yahoo, ultimately taking the stock price from $35 to $113, helped by Yahoo’s stakes in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan.

Ms. Mayer on Wednesday said she would announce a more detailed reorganization plan on the fourth-quarter earnings call next month.

In the wake of Yahoo’s decision, however, investor dissent is escalating.

A Yahoo spokeswoman declined to reveal the twins’ names or weights.

Despite Mayer’s efforts to jumpstart Yahoo’s Internet advertising business over the past three and a half years, the company has only lost ground to Google and Facebook.

– Eliminate 9,000 of the company’s 12,000 jobs, amounting to about 75% of the company’s workforce.

“It’s not impossible at all”, said Jackson in his slide presentation.

Liberty Media didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Jackson calculated that Yahoo could get about $6 billion if its core businesses were sold. With cost cutting and improvements to profitability, he predicts it could eventually be acquired for more than $24 billion. The company’s “inaction to date has been startling”, the letter stated. The firm is particularly concerned that Yahoo didn’t include “any clear details in terms of analysis, process or timing” with its announcement. Divesting the core businesses in the new strategy, however, may also carry similar tax risks, Canyon Capital wrote.

As she did with her son, Mayer plans to only take a “limited” time away from Yahoo’s Sunnyvale, California, headquarters. Activist shareholder Starboard Value LP last month called for the company to drop the Alibaba spinoff and instead sell its Web businesses, or face a proxy fight. Yahoo’s ongoing financial funk has intensified speculation that Mayer might not be Yahoo’s CEO a year from now, although company Chairman Maynard Webb said Wednesday that Yahoo’s board still has faith in her.