Less than a week after Yahoo scrapped plans to spin off its Alibaba stake and instead explore a reverse spinoff of its core Internet business and certain other assets, some of its major stockholders are voicing objections.
Canyon Capital fired off a letter Friday evening to the company’s management arguing that Yahoo’s new potential restructuring plan, which was revealed late Tuesday, lacked “any clear details in terms of analysis, process, or timing.” The Sunnyvale, California, money manager, with $24 billion in assets under management, holds a stake of about 10 million shares and is one of Yahoo’s larger hedge fund investors.
A reverse spinoff of the core business plus its cash and Yahoo Japan stake, which is the notion now under consideration, “would be … fraught with operational, tax and execution risks similar to those that ultimately caused it to abandon the Alibaba spin,” the Canyon letter said.
