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If I recall correctly, Yahoo!, under Mayer's watch, sold out half of its Alibaba stake at a valuation of $40bn. That sale is looking like a colossally bad decis

by kolbe 13y ago

If I recall correctly, Yahoo!, under Mayer's watch, sold out half of its Alibaba stake at a valuation of $40bn. That sale is looking like a colossally bad decision (that is, a $12b loss). The 70% rise that Yahoo has had since she started is about $12bn in market cap. Yahoo's remaining 20% stake in Alibaba went from 40bn to a projected 100bn, netting $12bn. So, do you think Mayer's management is responsible, or is it that a legacy asset increased in price? http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/04/25/why-alibaba-could-be-chinas-next-100-billion-i-p-o/ http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/04/25/why-alibaba-could-be-...

jblow 13y ago
Whatever. It is easy to make a single decision that is right or wrong. Or, a decision can be right given limited information ("this thing has low odds of paying off"), but "wrong" given what actually happens ("what do you know, against odds, it paid off!") Anyone who plays Poker knows this. You can't look at one decision and use it as a barometer to know whether a CEO is good or bad. That is just silly. It makes more sense to look at the body of decisions.
- kolbe 13y ago
  That's all fine to say, but unfortunately for this decision, it cost shareholders 12 billion dollars. Her poker hand may have been good, but it lost, and it lost HUGE. And in all fairness, I don't know how much of that decision was hers, per se. But the risk that a good decision has a bad outsome it kind of the risk that CEOs take. People are lazy, and they tend to just look at outcomes. Hedge fund managers don't get paid for good losses. And they get their funds closed when they bet the house on a good decision that goes bad. I wish her the best, but she's going to have a very difficult time making a body of good decisions that will make up for that one, if it was her doing. Either way, my point is to say that hiring Mayer has neither hurt nor helped Yahoo's enterprise value. The entire company, just as was was under Jerry Yang, is just moving around with the value of its assets.
deleted 13y ago
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by kolbe 13y ago

jblow 13y ago

Whatever. It is easy to make a single decision that is right or wrong. Or, a decision can be right given limited information ("this thing has low odds of paying off"), but "wrong" given what actually happens ("what do you know, against odds, it paid off!") Anyone who plays Poker knows this. You can't look at one decision and use it as a barometer to know whether a CEO is good or bad. That is just silly. It makes more sense to look at the body of decisions.

kolbe 13y ago
That's all fine to say, but unfortunately for this decision, it cost shareholders 12 billion dollars. Her poker hand may have been good, but it lost, and it lost HUGE. And in all fairness, I don't know how much of that decision was hers, per se. But the risk that a good decision has a bad outsome it kind of the risk that CEOs take. People are lazy, and they tend to just look at outcomes. Hedge fund managers don't get paid for good losses. And they get their funds closed when they bet the house on a good decision that goes bad. I wish her the best, but she's going to have a very difficult time making a body of good decisions that will make up for that one, if it was her doing. Either way, my point is to say that hiring Mayer has neither hurt nor helped Yahoo's enterprise value. The entire company, just as was was under Jerry Yang, is just moving around with the value of its assets.

deleted 13y ago

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