Once spurned Microsoft plays hard-to-get after Yahoo offer

07 November 2008

Beleaguered Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang may have spoken about the possibility of Microsoft renewing interest in his company after the much-hyped advertising deal with Google failed to materialise, but Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is playing hard to get.

After having been rebuffed by Yang on numerous occasions over the past year, Ballmer told a business lunch in Sydney, Australia, that his company has "no interest" in renewing acquisition talks it abandoned earlier this year. (See: Cornered Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang looks to Microsoft for succour)

Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, has ''moved on,'' and isn't planning to make another bid, Ballmer asserted. However, he left the door open for a possible arrangement by saying Microsoft may still have partnership deals with Yahoo.

"We made an offer, we made another offer, and it was clear that Yahoo didn't want to sell the business to us and we moved on," Ballmer said. "We are not interested in going back and re-looking at an acquisition. I don't know why they would be either, frankly. They turned us down at $33 a share."

Yahoo shares last traded at $13.96 on the New York Stock Exchange. Yahoo stock hit a 52-week low of $11.25 last week, well off its high for the year of $30.25 that it hit while Microsoft was pursuing it for $33 a share, or about $47.5 billion.

Yahoo sought the partnership with Google, the most-used search engine, as a way to bolster sales. Yahoo's revenue growth, excluding sales shared with partners, slowed to 3 per cent last quarter, down from 14 per cent a year earlier. Likely opposition from government antitrust regulators ended that possibility, though.