The following is an excerpt from Liz Gannes and Kara Swisher | August 10, 2012 | Allthingsd.com |
Now that she could have $4 billion more to play with from the proceeds of Yahoo’s sale of its Chinese assets, here’s a fun new Silicon Valley parlor game to enjoy: “What will Marissa Mayer buy?”
Her moves are more than just an exercise, though, as it’s becoming clear that the new Yahoo chief will be using acquisition as one of the key tools to bring talent into the forlorn Silicon Valley Internet giant and, presumably, foment both innovation and growth.
And there’s nothing like a big splashy acquisition from a new flashy CEO to get people inside and outside of Yahoo thinking the company is cool again.
Mayer is someone who knows from buying, having been involved in many Google acquisition negotiations over the years, including those that worked (Zagat) and those that didn’t take (Yelp and Foursquare).
But now the buck truly stops — and starts — with her.
Previously, Mayer had about $2 billion in Yahoo cash to use, some of which is tied up abroad and cannot be repatriated for tax reasons. While that’s certainly not chump change, it is minuscule in comparison to Microsoft, Apple, Google and even Facebook, all of whom would be bidding rivals in a number of cases and most of whom — sorry, Mark Zuckerberg — have much stronger stock to also use.
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