Yahoo! Shareholder accused CEO Marissa Mayer of buying "zombie companies" from his accomplices at Google

Source: SpringOwl

On Monday, SpringOwl hedge fund managing partner Eric Jackson sent Yahoo! presentation of 99 pages. It talked about why it is necessary to remove Marissa Meyer from the post of general director as soon as possible and find new leadership.

SpringOwl is a minority shareholder of Yahoo !, but it seems to have big ambitions and considers it a duty to express its opinion publicly.
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Jackson believes that over the past 3 years Mayer has “burned” $ 3 billion in mergers and acquisitions. Jackson believes that the total was irrational use of $ 10 billion capital of Yahoo! ..

Shares of the company continue to fall, and now it is not clear how acquisitions should have saved the situation.
The capitalist also notes that out of 49 startups purchased by Yahoo, 6 are founded by ex- Google employees. According to his estimates, the total cost of these six projects was $ 319 million, reports Business Insider.

However, Marissa Mayer explained such a number of takeovers with the desire to improve the company's business, acquiring not only technology, but also attracting “new blood”, talented personnel.

In July, Yahoo acquired Polyvore for $ 230 million. This is a site and an online community dedicated to fashion and style. The startup was founded by people from Yahoo, including Jess Lee, with whom Meyer worked at Google. The choice fell on him, since the project was supposedly "huge potential."

However, Eric Jackson recalls that this startup has attracted $ 22 million from investors and has not experienced a single take-off over 8 years of its life - only a fall. The project was almost close to bankruptcy when it was bought by Yahoo. Mayer insisted on the deal, despite the fact that the shareholders of the SpringOwl fund did not agree with the start-up assessment and found it to be too high. According to anonymous sources, and Yahoo employees themselves were not happy with the deal.

If you analyze each acquisition of the company, it will be clear that such a scenario is a familiar, and unfortunately, vicious practice, Eric Jackson is sure.

According to Jackson, “squandering” hundreds of millions of dollars on a zombie company, launched by ex-Google employees, is simply unacceptable.

The managing partner of SpringOwl believes that as a result of Marissa Meyer’s poor management policies, Yahoo’s core business is undervalued. Therefore, in no case can it be sold now. He plans to enlist the support of larger shareholders to influence the current situation. According to Jackson, he was already able to convince some of them.