Embattled Legg Mason Lends Yahoo! (YHOO) Some Support

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Disgraced stock-picking guru Bill Miller of Legg Mason says he will support Yahoo!’s (YHOO) efforts to stay independent if Microsoft (MSFT) lowers the value of its offer to buy the portal company. Since Miller has lost more money for his investors that the US Treasury keeps on deposit, he might be better off keeping his opinions out of the newspaper.

But, he is a plucky lad and will not be held down by a few tough quarters. According to The Wall Street Journal "Mr. Miller said that the current value of Microsoft’s offer — $29.17 per share as of 4 p.m. Nasdaq market trading Tuesday — "is not something I’m too excited about." Legg Mason owns 7% of Yahoo!’s shares.

The investment firm may want to make its own offer of $35 a share for Yahoo! because no one else will. Even if the Microsoft bid is a poor business decision by Redmond, no other company has stepped up to top it. Rumored conversations with Time Warner (TWX) and News Corp (NWS) have not been sufficiently important so that Yahoo! can point to them as serious alternatives.

Miller may be the only man, woman, or child who thinks that anyone will come along with a better offer for the struggling portal company.

Miller is now used to watching the value of his investments tank. He can see a rerun of the implosion of his portfolio as Microsoft walks off and Yahoo! drops to $17. All he will have to keep him warm at night will be his opinions.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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