Microsoft-Yahoo Bankers: Worth $300 Million in Fees?

so you're saying its a zerosum game? if goldman is saving $200 mm for yhoo, morgan is causing msft to bleed $200 mm?

Yes, this is zero sum and 100% pure racket.

GOOD NEWS MORGAN WILL MAKE LOTS OF MILLIONS ON THIS ONE DEAL ONLY Morgan doing more small and medium size deal plus equity trading profits plus commodity trading profits and asset management fees and dividends from the many business morgan own and many more Harlingen City Boy Deep Deep South Texas Southern California of TEXAS

Having brought in a cfo who was formerly head of i-banking at weisel, yahoo should be self-reliant on the m&a side. This is just another case where the seller's board is all too happy to triple engage in CYA when a sale is inevitable. The burden yahoo shoulders paying all the bankers is that much that could have gone toward building a stronger combined company. Nobody ever said boards put the interests of their employees or their shareholders for that matter, ahead of their own, nothwithstanding expensive D&O policies that protect them.

I agree. This is a racket and a huge rip-off. MSFT-YHOO deal has been talked about for years. So I am not sure what kind of work each of these greedy bankers do to earn 100 million a piece? MSFT has actually lost over 40 billion market cap, so Morgan Stanley and Blackstone has not only failed in advising MSFT but cost them a huge fortune. Shouldn't their fees also performance based (how well market accepts the deal)

I agree. This is a racket and a huge rip-off. MSFT-YHOO deal has been talked about for years. So I am not sure what kind of work each of these greedy bankers do to earn 100 million a piece? MSFT has actually lost over 40 billion market cap, so Morgan Stanley and Blackstone has not only failed in advising MSFT but cost them a huge fortune. Shouldn't their fees also performance based (how well market accepts the deal)

Ok so let's see...we pay the banker's, the board members, the advisors, and then there is Jerry Yang. He will probably need pych counseling after his baby that he is emotionally tied too can't make an objective decision to sell Yahoo which is the right thing to do. SO for the record and large shareholder of Yahoo I want my name put on the list as a consultant since I have been writing articles and blogs for alot longer than this latest offer came in from Microsoft. My fees are much less expensive though. I am only charging 1.5 million plus a bonus of $ 500,000.00. I will be sending my invoice soon. Thank you so much!

No deal.......yeap! you people can red...oops! read. The stiff shirt nincompoops on the board can talk this "its best" crap until the cows come home but this great search engine ain't about to cozy up to a company that just got out of bed with wmt. Goldman Sachs knows all to well about value and Morgan Stanley knows ....duh! well maybe if that Mack wus a truck....who knows what they know. With Beetle eating the worms in Google it ain't gonna be long until the ad dollars come back to a true blue not red American company.

They should outsource this I-bank stuff to India. They could do for $300K instead of $300M.

The amount "earned" by the M&A folks has no relationship to real world of working for a living. What would their earnings be if it was put into cost per hour per person working on the project, and please... lets add in the interest costs for any funds they might be floating. Wall Street's greedy grabs are based on extracting the maximum possible and still allow the merger to proceed. As I recall Goldman has budgeted 17 BILLION for their bonus in 2008... so, my goodness.... that "earned" money has to come from somewhere.

The amount "earned" by the M&A folks has no relationship to real world of working for a living. What would their earnings be if it was put into cost per hour per person working on the project, and please... lets add in the interest costs for any funds they might be floating. Wall Street's greedy grabs are based on extracting the maximum possible and still allow the merger to proceed. As I recall Goldman has budgeted 17 BILLION for their bonus in 2008... so, my goodness.... that "earned" money has to come from somewhere.