April 8, 2008
Jerry Yang’s Overarching Need for a Ghostwriter
Jerry Yang’s recent letter to Steve Ballmer is painful to read. It’s a long, meandering, redundant pile of crap peppered with awful corporate jargon (leverage, platform, execute, scale, process). That terrible phrase, “maximize stockholder value,” appears not once or twice, but five times. And don’t get me started on “significant potential upside.”
Two particularly egregious bits:
“Our position is simply that any transaction must be at a value that fully reflects the value of Yahoo!”
How about adding another “value” in there? Our valuable position, maybe?
“Your comment that we have refused to enter into negotiations to conclude an agreement are particularly curious given we have already rejected your initial proposal, nominally $31 per share at the time, for substantially undervaluing Yahoo! and your suggestions in your letter and the media that you are considering lowering the value of your proposal.”
I’ve read this sentence six times and still don’t understand it.
Jerry Yang, please allow me to restate my position, so there can be no confusion. Shareholder value can only be maximized, and significant potential upside can only occur, when you hire a ghostwriter.
April 8th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
He has a ghostwriter - the I-bankers would have written that.
April 8th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
Rod: Sadly no, the bankers have people who know how to write. That’s Yang’s personal handiwork on display, unfortunately.
April 9th, 2008 at 9:06 am
Americans are falling way behind. This is Americanese, just like Alan Greenspan. No 31.
NOT the number 31, but a NO for thirty-one dollars per share. The number 31 is, was and remained rejected. Thus any number equal to or lower than 31 will be and will continue to be rejected. Now if you like a mentor to learn Americanese, I will sent Jerry/Alan over to you. Now only if I knew what I just wrote. Relax, calm down, once that guy Palm something learn math the number will be higher than 31.
April 9th, 2008 at 9:51 am
shaun: Greenspan was intentionally obscure (and he’s a pretentious nitwit) … Jerry went to Stanford where they must teach everyone, even the computer science geeks, how to write, no?