Gotta love this quote:
Would Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz have accepted Microsoft's $40 billion-plus takeover offer last year if she had been in charge of the company then? "Sure, do you think I'm stupid?" Bartz said in an interview Thursday on CNBC, the business-news cable channel. Read more here.
There was a great quote in a book called "Breaking Windows" where Bill Gates was reported as saying "something happens to a man when his net worth exceeds $100M, all they are interested in is their legacy and not what you or anyone else wants". Quote is not exact, but along those lines. Jerry Yang fits into that category and the pursuit of legacy really let down many Yahoo! shareholders and possibly employees. I dare say Yahoo! is not the only company with this problem. I am sure at Microsoft there are folks who have got to this stage ... but how do you align the interests of shareholders with people who are too wealthy to care what they think? This will always be one of those unsolved problems in organizational behavior.