Cramer Calls For A Yahoo! & eBay Merger

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Cramer came out tonight on CNBC’s MAD MONEY proposing that Yahoo! (YHOO) and eBay (EBAY) should get together and merge.  He is calling for this because the growth is slowing in both areas and that would jumpstart it.  Cramer contends that companies with slower growth have to do something to get their sizzle back.  Cramer said that Microsoft (MSFT) was reportedly in talks to buy Yahoo!, but the aQuantive (AQNT) buyout signals it is willing to do deals.  If these companies had better areas to invest in they wouldn’t be propping shares up with buybacks.  This would allow Yahoo!’s massive users to use Skype and PayPal to buy goods.  Cramer thinks this would bring back growth, and would finally get Semel out of Yahoo!

As Cramer is long Yahoo! (YHOO) in his charitable trust and as he’s been touting ideas for something like this, this ‘call to merge’ is hardly a surprise to me or to others.  The market caps are very similar, although eBay is the larger company. 

Jon C. Ogg
May 30, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.

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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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