AOL, Yahoo Execs Spent Two Days Talking Integration (YHOO)

AOL (TWX) and Yahoo (YHOO) came close enough to merging last fall that executives from each company's media groups spent two days planning an eventual integration, says a source with knowledge of the meetings.


AOL president and COO Ron Grant and new MediaGlow president Bill Wilson attended.

Negotiations between the companies had reached a point where attending executives from both companies assumed the deal would get done.

But eventually, AOL's top executives "got pissed off" as Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock and CEO Jerry Yang wavered on whether to pull the trigger. When Yang announced he would step down from CEO, Bostock at first figured he'd complete the AOL deal anyway, but eventually decided not to saddle a new CEO with a deal not of his or her doing.

How did executives decide an AOL-Yahoo would look? One exec familar with the talks said the meetings ended with plans to merge the best niche sites from each company, keeping two brands when necessary, but with deep cuts to staffing -- mostly on the AOL side.





Yahoo Could Merge With AOL Without A New CEO (YHOO)

Yahoo (YHOO) chairman Roy Bostock is suddenly a man in a hurry. Not only does he believe Yahoo will name a new CEO before 2009 -- about four weeks away -- he's also telling people that a long-discussed AOL-Yahoo merger could be completed as early as next week.

"Bostock has intimated that Yahoo was ready to do a deal at any time in the next week or so to merge with AOL–with or without a new CEO in place," Kara Swisher reports .
The final sticking point in the AOL-Yahoo merger is price, of course. Kara reports:
Yahoo has long wanted to give Time Warner about 20 percent of the merged company, while Time Warner has wanted one-third. At current prices, that’s about $3 billion in value versus $5 billion.
The way Kara characterizes it, the chief negotiator in the AOL (TWX) deal remains Jerry Yang, who will remain on the board and become Chief Yahoo after he steps down from CEO.
In other words, don't hold your breath. If Jerry proved anything during his Yahoo tenure -- remember the 100 days of sacred cows, the interminable silences during the Microsoft dance, this very AOL-Yahoo deal -- it's that he's not exactly a cheetah-quick decision-maker.





Yahoo's Bostock Wants A CEO Before 2009 (YHOO)


Yahoo (YHOO) chairman Roy Bostock says the company will have a new CEO before the end of the year, sources tell Kara Swisher . Perhaps someone should remind Roy that's only four weeks away and that he better get cracking.
A good first step, which Kara says hasn't happened yet, would be organizing a search committee to find this company savior. So far it's just Roy and fellow board member Gary Wilson going over names that headhunter firm Heidrick & Struggles comes up with.
Kara says Roy and Gary have come up with six criteria for the incoming CEO, however:
The first is that the candidate have “extensive” experience as the CEO of a public company. Another calls for media and advertising expertise. And mergers and acquisitions experience. Also strategic skills.
"Tall order," as Kara notes, and indeed. But have we mentioned we (and our polled readers) like former DoubleClick CEO and current Google (GOOG) exec David Rosenblatt for the job?
By the criteria, he only fails in that DoubleClick was a private concern when he ran it. But the media and advertising company was the size of a public company, and Rosenblatt wielded plenty of strategic skills turning it around and getting it acquired by Google for $3.1 billion.