02/05/2008, 8:20am, EST
Tuesday, February 5thMS may need first-ever loan to buy Yahoo
Microsoft may need to abandon its longstanding financial independence to complete a takeover of Yahoo, the company said late yesterday. Despite its large cash reserves, the company's Chief Finance Officer Chris Liddell acknowledged that the $44.6 billion proposed deal might require that the firm borrow money and accumulate debt. While the $21 billion in reserves owned by the Windows developer would cover nearly all the cash portion of the proposed deal, a loan would help Microsoft avoid wiping out these reserves and leaving itself without options if it needs more cash in the near future, according to the executive.
The willingness to rely on loans indicates Microsoft's commitment to its proposed bid, which is widely understood to be an attempt to thwart Google's control of search and web advertising. The company has officially claimed to be creating a viable alternative in the market.
However, reports have surfaced that Yahoo considers Microsoft a threat and that the company is considering an alliance with Google or other alternative firms as an attempt to make a Microsoft deal impractical or impossible. Google has commented on the deal and warned that Microsoft might translate its monopolies with Office and Windows to the Internet by creating proprietary web standards.
Filed under: industry
Other story tags: Microsoft, Google, Yahoo
, 
, 13
, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
Top
subscribe to comments
for this article
I'm all in favour ;)
Doofuses.
Duh!! How many times have I gone to a website and told that if I want to see anything on that site, I HAD to use Explorer!! Microsoft proprietary web standards, they're already here!
You might want to turn up the gain on your Sarcast-o-meter.