Yes, that's how it works. When you sell part of a business, the owners of the business (the stockholders) receive their share of the proceeds. Management (the

Yes, that's how it works. When you sell part of a business, the owners of the business (the stockholders) receive their share of the proceeds. Management (the CEO and other senior leaders) is hired by the stockholders to negotiate these sorts of deals (among other things). The stockholders are always free to fire management for poor performance if they don't like what management is doing. You are correct to note that Yahoo's actual business represents only a small portion of the value of the company at this point. The majority of the value of the company is Yahoo's holdings in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan (a similarly named but completely separate enterprise). Frankly, I'm a bit surprised that they managed to get $5B for their core business. I think YHOO shareholders are getting a pretty good deal here.