Microsoft and Yahoo finally tied a knot, but not the knot that Yahoo shareholders have long yearned for. The new-economy giants inked a 10-year Web search deal in a bid to take on Google. Google shares barely budged but Yahoo’s sank more than 6 percent as the deal stopped short of combining display advertising businesses.

Back when this deal was all the rage, it was a story of egos. Then Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang was ultimately thrown out for not getting a deal done. Veteran agitator Carl Icahn was in top form, blasting Yahoo from the Street. Now under the new management of Carol Bartz, expectations were slowly rising that a broader deal might get done.

The question now is whether the market that had for so long hoped for a big deal will see this one as at least a step in the right direction.

Anyone want to take a shot at what’s behind Time Warner’s repurchase of a 5 percent stake in AOL held by Google? Time Warner sold the stake in December 2005 for $1 billion. Now, it has bought it back for $238 million — a nice job of selling high and buying low. Time Warner plans to spin off AOL by the end of the year.

The 2005 deal implied a chunky price tag of $20 billion for AOL. While it may not be exactly apples to apples, the repurchase implies a value of about $5.7 billion.

Brigantine Advisors analyst Colin Gillis said the implied $5.7 billion represents a “floor valuation ” as AOL moves toward a spinoff. If that’s true, then Google not only overpaid, but undersold.

Then again, with AOL expecting about $90 million of restructuring charges in the last nine months of 2009, and $58.3 million in charges already taken, related primarily to layoffs and closing facilities, maybe Google got out cheap.

We sprinkled updates into this blog. We're highlighting them like this.

Thanks to TechCrunch, U.S. tech reporters are about to spend another weekend working instead of playing. UPDATE: Or maybe Kara Swisher at All Things D will save them!

Two sources told proprietor Michael Arrington that Google "is in late stage negotiations to acquire Twitter." He wrote:

We don't know the price but can assume its well, well north of the $250 million valuation that they saw in their recent funding.

Twitter turned down an offer to be bought by Facebook just a few months ago for half a billion dollars, although that was based partially on overvalued Facebook stock. Google would be paying in cash and/or publicly valued stock, which is equivalent to cash. So whatever the final acquisition value might be, it can't be compared apples-to-apples with the Facebook deal.

Why would Google want Twitter? We've been arguing for some time that Twitter's real value is in search. It holds the keys to the best real time database and search engine on the Internet, and Google doesn't even have a horse in the game.

Later, he updated his entry to say that another source told him talks are at an early stage and could amount to a deal to build a Google real-time search engine. Who knows how this one will shake out. Web operations like Twitter can't get popular without people starting to fit puzzle pieces together to see which company ought to buy them. That might be why The San Francisco Business Times picked up Wired and Industry Standard founder John Battelle's blog entry that Twitter would go to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp for $750 million. Turns out it was an April Fool's joke.

Then Swisher at All Things D said this:

While the "news" that Google was in "late-stage" talks to acquire Twitter, which TechCrunch reported last night, certainly sounds exciting, it isn't accurate in any way, according to a number of sources BoomTown spoke to close to the situation.

She also covered herself with a "to-be-sure graf," as hacks like me call them:

Google or anyone else could plunk down more than $1 billion in cash and I cannot imagine Twitter's investors would or could resist. Nor should they. And, what if, for example, Microsoft (MSFT) offered some huge cash payday for Twitter? In that case, I am certain Google would jump into the face-off, backing up a giant Brinks trunk to the door of Twitter's San Francisco offices.

Afterward, everyone scratched their heads and ruminated mightily about this very important situation. TechCrunch, meanwhile, stands by its story, a blogger there told us.

Will Google announce plans to buy Twitter in 2009?

Keep an eye on:

• MediaNews Group, the Denver-based newspaper publisher run by legendary hyper-acquirer "Lean Dean" Singleton, worked out a deal with creditors on paying off its heavy debt that Singleton put on the company as he bought and bought and bought newspapers (before slashing and slashing their budgets and staff). And he said bankruptcy wasn't an issue. (The New York Times)
• Some people who work with him have told me that New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller comes off as arrogant, but he's actually shy. This is the same shy man who at Stanford University on Thursday said CNN's reporting has been replaced by juries of commentators who work on a set that looks like a parody of a Daily Show parody of a news set. He also said saving The New York Times ranks with saving Darfur as a high-minded cause. From my own interactions with Keller, I would conclude that he's a deadpan comic, not shy. (Politico)
• TMZ.com is devoting more money to reporting gossip from Washington, D.C. Why flack this now? Is it because parent company Time Warner is geeking out at the cable show in DC this week? Maybe TMZ's Harvey Levin bunked up with Time Warner Chief Executive Jeff Bewkes to save money in the downturn. OK, maybe not. (Reuters)
• In case you didn't know already, you should not get news for free online. Rupert said so. (Please ignore this free blog entry on this free website). It shouldn't work for online TV either, said Discovery Chief Executive David Zaslav. (PaidContent)

(Photo: Reuters)

(Refiles to correct Donahoe's first name to John.)

To sell Skype, or not to sell Skype. That is the question for eBay, and Wall Street has diverging opinions on whether the San Jose company will or won't unload its Internet telephone service.
    
Skype was acquired under the reign of former CEO Meg Whitman (now a California gubernatorial hopeful) and touted as a nifty way for eBay's millions of sellers and buyers to connect. That reality never materialized, and current CEO John Donahoe has acknowledged that synergies between eBay and Skype are nonexistent.
    
Still, Skype is on a tear, growing at double digits and adding 350,000 global users a day. The five-year-old company logged $551 million in revenue in 2008 -- that number is expected to double by 2011 -- and is now a subject of great speculation by analysts, who wonder whether eBay plans to spin it off, or hold it close. 
                              
Cowan and Co's Jim Friedland, for one, thinks it's for sale. Writing in a note the day after eBay held an analyst presentation to outline the company's three-year plan, Friedland said it appeared "eBay was using the Skype discussion to trigger a bidding war between Google and Microsoft."
       
"We believe the asset would be attractive to both Google and Microsoft to enhance their web-based enterprise application services. In addition, Skype's user base of 405 million, which is particularly strong internationally, would likely strengthen Google's dominant position in the consumer web app market."

But Bernstein Research's Jeffrey Lindsay did not see it that way: "We think the dearth of buyers such as Google or Microsoft will mean that eBay is more likely to spin out part of Skype to the public (like Time Warner did initially with Time Warner Cable)."
    
Huh. Donahoe, incidentally, has said only that eBay will do what's best "to maximize Skype's potential and value."
    
Deutsche Bank's Jeetil Patel opined that, since Skype is performing well, "Management should hold on to this business model" and Credit Suisse's Spencer Wang said he did not see eBay rushing to sell.
    
"While we think the company would be open to parting with Skype at the right price (currently valued at $1.8 billion on eBay's balance sheet), a divestiture of Skype does not appear imminent," Wang wrote.

(Photo: Reuters)

“People who know me know I don’t have an ego about remaining independent versus not remaining independent,” Yahoo chief Jerry Yang told the Web 2.0 Summit. That’s a good thing because rejection is starting to become a refrain for the Internet company. 
 
Yang must be pumped by Yahoo’s share price, which surged after a rumor posted on a blog said the company was in advanced talks to sell itself to Microsoft for $17 to $19 a share. But the blog also reported that Yang would step down as CEO. Yahoo officials later said the report was untrue, but before the open this morning Yahoo shares were still climbing.
 
Google ditched a search advertising partnership with Yahoo this week. News Corp said on its earnings call yesterday that talked-about talks with Yahoo were not happening. Microsoft walked away from a deal to buy the company in May. Yang declined to comment on Yahoo’s discussions with Time Warner about buying AOL. Failure of that deal could at least give him a chance to jilt somebody, for a change.
    
Yang says he is still open to selling to Microsoft at the right price. The question is whether the price will be as resilient as his ego.  
 
Deals of the day:
 
* Malaysia’s CIMB Bank will make an offer to buy in the market the 57.87 percent of Thai lender BankThai that it does not already own and the price is expected to be 2.10 baht per share, BankThai said.
 
* Vodafone, the world’s biggest mobile phone group by revenue, has succeeded in its bid to take control of South Africa’s biggest mobile phone operator, Vodacom Group. 
 
* Kuwait’s Mobile Telecommunications said it planned to make four to five acquisitions worth up to $4 billion before 2010 after a global credit crisis depressed asset prices for telecom firms. 
 
* North American brewer Molson Coors Brewing has emerged as holder of a 5 percent stake in Australian brewer Foster’s Group, giving it a seat at the bar amid persistent takeover talk. 
 
* Swiss bank UBS bought a minority stake in Governance Metrics International, a research advisory company specializing in corporate governance. 
 
* Russian oil major LUKOIL and Italian refiner ERG will finalize a 1.35 billion euro ($1.74 billion) deal allowing LUKOIL to break into the western European refining business, industry sources told Reuters. 
 
* British property developer and investment company Westcity said it was pulling out of the Kenny Heights mixed residential and retail development project in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. 
 
* Property investment and development company Town Centre Securities said it sold its 50 percent interest in a joint venture to its partner, Q-Park Ltd, for 8.7 million pounds ($13.80 million) in cash. 
 
* Dublin-based Changingworlds, a mobile phone services firm that counts Vodafone and Sprint among its customers, said it had been bought by New York-listed Amdocs for $60 million. 
 
* Susanne Klatten, Germany’s richest woman, offered to buy the rest of Altana in a deal worth 910 million euros ($1.17 billion) as the specialty chemicals maker dampened its 2008 outlook.

So Yahoo and Google scaled back the terms of their search advertising deal in what looks like a last-ditch, attempt — at least for Yahoo — to get it past U.S. regulators.

Some analysts called it the Band-Aid deal, while others said it smacks of desperation.

Frost & Sullivan’s digital media global director Mukul Krishna said the revised terms were “more of a Band-Aid than the extensive surgery” Yahoo needs.

Barclays Capital’s Douglas Anmuth had a similar take: “We have long viewed the search outsourcing deal as a Band-Aid-not-a-panacea for Yahoo, but compromised terms or an outright rejection of the deal would likely force Yahoo to consider other strategic measures.”

Those “other” measures are a merger of Yahoo and Time Warner’s AOL unit, or Yahoo shareholders’ ultimate dream: Microsoft coming back to woo Yahoo.

Eric Jackson, the dissident Yahoo shareholder who sold his fund’s 3 million Yahoo shares in September after being convinced regulators would nix the Google deal, said: “You just gotta hope that the love bug bites Microsoft again and they want to come back.”

Sanford Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay said he expects Yahoo’s deal with Google to falter and for Microsoft to come back next year with a bid of around $20 per share. That may not sound too bad considering Yahoo is trading at $13, but remember that the last Microsoft offer had been for $33 a share.

Meanwhile, Needham & Co’s Mark May outlined six scenarios in his research note this morning:

1. Regulators approve Yahoo-Google deal with no additional conditions, which would likely cause short-term jump in Yahoo shares and add no more than $80 million to $100 million to Yahoo’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization in the first year. Remember, Yahoo had said it was expecting a cash flow boost of between $250 million and $450 million.
2. Regulators approve, but with stipulations, which could lead the companies to call the deal off, or if they stick with it, even smaller financial benefits.
3. Deal terminated, Yahoo sells search to Microsoft — but May says that would be a bad long-term strategy for Yahoo because it wouldn’t add much to earnings.
4. Yahoo-Google deal terminated, Yahoo and AOL merge. May says this deal would be problematic and not good for shareholders, listing integration challenges and cultural differences among other issues.
5. Microsoft buys all of Yahoo, which is what shareholders seem to want, but does Microsoft want it? May estimates Microsoft might offer between $20-$25 a share for all of Yahoo, but Yahoo’s board would probably not want to negotiate at that price.
6. Yahoo-Google deal terminated, Yahoo continues status quo. May calls it the “worst possible scenario” of the six he laid out.

The thing is, Yahoo just might choose to do nothing if the deal with Google doesn’t get through regulators. But if Yahoo does that, “stakeholders will want some blood, and Jerry (Yang, Yahoo’s CEO) will be a target,” Frost’s Krishna said.

With tens of billions in the bank collecting dust since its failed bid for Yahoo, and the elusive promise of the Internet still beckoning, Microsoft returned to the market for Internet search businesses with a $486 million purchase of Greenfield Online, the U.S.-listed owner of European price comparison website ciao.com. The buy is meant to help lift Microsoft out of fifth place in the European search market by giving a boost to its Live Search platform. Google’s monster lead in the search market is a whopping 62 percent and 79 percent in Europe, according to the most recent data published by Web usage tracker ComScore. Microsoft has a 2 percent market share in Europe and 9 percent worldwide, behind both Google and Yahoo. In Europe, Microsoft is also outranked by online auction site eBay and Russia’s Yandex.

Four large hedge funds, all Huntsman shareholders, have proposed a plan to finance at least $500 million of the $6.5 billion buyout of the chemical company by a unit of Apollo Global Management. Hedge funds Citadel Investment Group, D.E. Shaw & Co, MatlinPatterson Global Advisers and Pentwater Growth Fund, and as of this morning, the Huntsman family, have agreed to team up on the financing plan, but Apollo’s Hexion Specialty Chemicals unit rejected the plan last night, saying Huntsman’s increased debt and decreased earnings since the deal was struck in July 2007 would no longer make a combined company solvent. “We are not seeking to renegotiate this transaction,” Hexion responded in a statement. “We are seeking to terminate it, and obtain judicial confirmation that Hexion has no obligation to pursue the acquisition or to pay Huntsman a termination fee.”

Allianz is set to sell Dresdner Bank to Commerzbank, sources with direct knowledge of the matter say, in a deal that will fuse Germany’s second- and third-biggest lenders. The deal, to be announced as soon as this weekend, will see Commerzbank take a 51 percent stake in Dresdner and buy the rest later, the sources said. Taking over Dresdner, which analysts estimate to be worth about 9 billion euros ($13 billion), will create a group to rival flagship lender Deutsche Bank and change the face of banking in Germany, Europe’s biggest economy. It will give Commerzbank a badly needed leg up in its home market, which is dominated by state not-for-profit lenders and allow Allianz to end an unhappy marriage that unsuccessfully tried to match investment bankers with insurance salesmen. The deal is likely to result in heavy job cuts, which would have been avoided had Allianz chosen to sell to another would-be buyer, China Development Bank.

Bain Capital and Carlyle Group are among the private equity firms through to the next round of bidding for a stake in the telecom unit being spun out of Hong Kong’s PCCW, according to sources. A deal, expected to come late this year, could fetch $2.5 billion. Two sources involved in the deal said Goldman Sachs’s private equity arm was considering joining TPG Capital in its own offer for the unit, though they could not confirm that the two had officially linked up. Sources also said Apax Partners moved into the next round of bids, due in mid to late October. PCCW, Hong Kong’s former monopoly fixed-line carrier, said in May it planned to fold its core media and telecoms businesses into a separate firm called HKT and sell 45 percent of the new company. At the time, PCCW shares had dropped 90 percent since 2000.

U.S. private equity firm Carlyle Group is seeking a new investor for Willcom, a Japanese mobile phone operator needing $1.8 billion to develop new technology services, four people familiar with the matter said. Carlyle, which owns 60 percent of unlisted Willcom, has hired Merrill Lynch, to find an investor to purchase new shares in Willcom, they said, asking not to be identified because the information is not public. Carlyle is also willing to sell part of its stake, the financial sources said. Electronic parts maker Kyocera owns 30 percent of Willcom and KDDI holds 10 percent. Willcom said in November it would need the money by the end of 2015 to develop new PHS technology to better compete against NTT DoCoMo, KDDI and Softbank. In December, it won one of two licenses from the government to provide next-generation wireless Internet access.

Other deals of the day:

* Australia’s takeover regulator said it has received an application from Britain’s BG Group requesting more information from Origin Energy to support Origin’s rejection of BG’s A$13.8 billion ($11.9 billion) takeover bid.

* The fate of a $2.7 billion deal involving Malayan Banking taking over Bank Internasional Indonesia is in Malaysia’s hands and the capital markets watchdog will not make exceptions to existing rules, Indonesia’s regulator said.

* Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, the world’s biggest bank by market value, is buying 100 percent of Russian bank Rosevrobank for between $800 million and $850 million, a newspaper reported.

* Dutch insurer Aegon said it is buying 50 percent of the insurance business of Spain’s Caixa Terrassa for 190 million euros ($281 million) as it seeks newer markets to fuel growth.

* Japanese video game maker Square Enix said it seeks to buy more than half of game developer Tecmo to improve its global competitiveness, in a deal worth at least $102 million.

* British oil and gas services firm Petrofac said it has bought production technology firm Caltec for a maximum 30 million pounds ($54.85 million).

* Hallin Marine Subsea International, which provides subsea services to the oil and gas industry, said it has bought engineering consultant to the energy sector, Prospect Flow Solutions, for up to 4.65 million pounds ($8.50 million).

* Turkish Airlines said its management board had decided to bid for a 49 percent stake in Bosnia’s BH Airlines.

Fresh from having Yahoo slip through its fingers, Microsoft’s plan to leapfrog into Consumerville takes another hit with news that Nokia is paying 264 million euros ($410 million) to buy out other shareholders of Symbian, the dominant player in smartphone software. Nokia says it will dissolve royalty payments for the platform, making it more attractive when compared to Google’s rival free platform, Android. Symbian’s operating systemis already used in two-thirds of smartphones; Nokia makes 40 percent of all phones sold globally. “This puts a lot of pressure on Microsoft right at a time when they are trying to really push into the consumer space,” said Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi. “For operators this offers a good alternative to Android.”

British gas producer BG Group launched a hostile $13.1 billion bid for Australia’s Origin Energy, as it seeks to boost its position in Asia-Pacific’s fast-growing gas market. BG is taking its A$13.8 billion all-cash bid, valuing Origin at A$15.50 a share, direct to shareholders after Origin’s board rejected it last month. Origin claimed then that its coal seam gas reserves alone were worth over $15 billion. Shares in Origin, which have surged over 85 percent this year, rose 6.2 percent to a record A$16.48 before closing up 5.8 percent at A$16.42, indicating investors expect an even higher offer. If successful, the deal would be the second-largest foreign takeover of an Australian company after Cemex, North America’s largest cement producer, bought Rinker Group last year for $14.2 billion.

Russian oil major Lukoil bought a 49 percent stake in Italian refiner ERG SpA’s Mediterranean plant for 1.35 billion euros ($2.1 billion), in a sign of the growing energy ties between Russia and Italy. Lukoil and ERG, Italy’s second-biggest refiner by market share, agreed a joint venture valued at 2.75 billion euros to control ERG’s Isab di Priolo refinery on Sicily. ERG will have 51 percent of the new company.

Other deals of the day:

* UBS said it had acquired Dutch wealth manager VermogensGroep.

* French aero engine and telecoms maker Safran said it had bought Dutch-based passport and secure ID document maker Sdu-Identifaction.

* Shares in China Oilfield Services, an arm of the CNOOC, jumped more than 3 percent as speculation grew about a potential takeover of Norwegian offshore driller Awilco Offshore.

* South Korean food group Dongwon said it will buy canned tuna company StarKist from Del Monte Foods for about $300 million, in the latest push by South Korean food makers for global expansion.

* Australian zinc and lead miner Perilya rejected as inadequate a takeover proposal from CBH Resources, both companies said, but Perilya left the door open to further talks.

* Flowers Foods, which produces baked goods, said it agreed to acquire Holsum Bakery in a cash and stock deal.

* Italy’s Banca Popolare dell’Emilia Romagna will launch a buyout offer for the 71.8 percent of its Meliorbanca unit it does not already own at 3.2 euros per share, BPER said.

* Hospital operator Tenet Healthcare said it will sell its interest in health care services company Broadlane Inc to TowerBrook Capital Partners for proceeds of about $155 million.

* Occidental Petroleum said it is buying a stake in a major Canadian oil sands project for C$500 million ($492 million), giving it a foothold in one of the world’s biggest developing oil plays as crude prices surge.

* Digimarc, a provider of secure identity technology, said it is spinning off its digital watermarking business as part of a deal with L-1 Identity Solutions, a photo and fingerprint identity equipment maker.

A story in The Wall Street Journal about Yahoo’s “reorganization” plans even as executives are leaving had us wondering which came first, the reorganization or the departures. The cynical might envision two scenarios:

Scenario 1: Yahoo begins hemorrhaging executives the week after it chooses Google over Microsoft. Investors, already mad at CEO Jerry Yang and the board for not cutting a deal with Microsoft, are likely to see the loss of top talent as a fallout. So Yahoo decides to do some damage control by “reorganizing” its various products, such as mail and messaging, into something more centralized, and indicate that as the reason for some six departures this week.

Scenario 2: After failing to strike a deal with Microsoft, and with investors less than thrilled at the Google partnership, Yahoo needs to do something to show the world it’s worth more than $47.5 billion. It dips into a fast-depleting bag of tricks and pulls out, wait, a “reorganization” plan we’ve sort of heard before. Executives shake their heads, worry that may not save the company and that they’re better off as venture capitalists (or maybe they’re considering job offers at Microsoft), and begin deserting.

So which came first, the chicken or the egg? Send us your thoughts.

(Photo: Reuters)

With Google looking like the big winner after doing an ad search deal with Yahoo, pretty much everyone else involved is looking like a loser. Microsoft will have to take its mammoth war chest and try to find another way to make a meaningful stab at the coveted online ad space — or concede the market altogether. Though Yahoo is waving enhanced revenue and cash flow figures around, the deal is seen as better for Google, which is the undisputed heavyweight champion in ad search and just gets a juicy space to show how mighty it is. “Google has made an enormous gain strategically. This move might well have shut Microsoft out of the online space altogether,” said Sanford Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay. Speculation is rising that the Yahoo/Google deal could provoke antitrust scrutiny, and Carl Icahn still has his troops massing to oust Jerry Yang and the Yahoo board. But if he had any clout to force Yahoo into a deal with Microsoft, it wasn’t on show yesterday. Did he lose cred, or does he plan to keep fighting? He may say soon, but probably not on his blog.

With signs that its wealthy clientele are growing nervous, UBS has wrapped up a 16 billion franc ($15.4 billion) rights issue. Flows into its wealth management business slowed to a trickle in the first three months of the year, and this is the Swiss bank’s second effort to resuscitate finances ravaged by the global markets crisis. Dieter Ewald, a fund manager at UBS shareholder Frankfurt Trust, said such concerns had prompted him recently to pare back his investment in the Swiss bank. “UBS is handicapped,” he said. “We are worried that wealth management will be hit. We want to see that the new management can bring it back on track, and then we would invest more again.”

Pfizer may bid for Ranbaxy Laboratories, countering a $4.6 billion offer by Japan’s Daiichi Sankyo for the Indian generic drug maker, the Business Standard newspaper said. Ranbaxy’s shares jumped nearly 5 percent on the report while Daiichi Sankyo’s shares dropped 2 percent. Daiichi Sankyo and Ranbaxy are seeking to become a pharmaceuticals powerhouse that sells both branded drugs and generics. The newspaper added Pfizer had held talks with the Ranbaxy founders for a possible acquisition a year earlier.

An infrastructure fund managed by Australia’s Babcock & Brown is to buy UK train leasing firm Angel Trains from Royal Bank of Scotland for 3.6 billion pounds ($7 billion) including debt. The deal came as shares in Babcock and Brown plunged for a second day on concerns about its debt and ability to raise funds but it will help Royal Bank of Scotland, Britain’s second-biggest bank, which is selling off non-core assets to further boost its balance sheet after raising 12 billion pounds ($23.5 billion) this week in the biggest ever rights issue.

Other deals of the day:

* Britain’s AEA Technology said it would buy U.S. company Project Performance Corp for $65 million and would raise 39.7 million pounds ($77.6 million) through a rights issue to help fund the deal.

* Struggling Finnish fine paper maker M-real Oyj cancelled a plan to divest its Reflex paper mill in Germany to Arjowiggins Group, citing to a condition set by the European Commission.

* India’s Jet Airways has decided to pull out of talks to buy a stake in low-cost carrier SpiceJet owing to differences over valuation, Business Standard newspaper said, citing sources from both airlines.

* A property investment arm of Morgan Stanley plans to sell at least two high-end serviced apartment projects in Shanghai, which are wholly owned by the Wall Street bank, for several billion yuan, people familiar with the situation said.

* South Korea’s National Pension Service, the world’s fifth-largest pension fund, will pump $173 million into a deal in which LS Cable has agreed to buy wire and cable maker Superior Essex.