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Comment by SoftwareMaven | Hacker News Reader

I really don't understand what Loeb is doing here. At this point in Thompson's career, whether he has a CS degree or not just seems completely immaterial. I can appreciate the "trust" issue, but Yahoo is in such a bad place that distracting the executive team even more seems like a really bad idea.

The only thing that makes sense to me is that Loeb has his own candidate he wants in the top spot, so he's going to torpedo anybody he can to get that person there.

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He wants control of the board. And at this point, he probably does not care much about the executive team or the stock price. The lower it goes, the more he can buy and thus put even more pressure to get his people on the board.

To what end? Does he think he can run the company better? Of course, given some of the decisions that have come out of Yahoo, he might be able to.

From what I can tell as an outsider: Loeb thinks the company is valued at $18 - $20 range or possibly higher (thanks to its Asian assets). If he can drive down the price, he can load up some more.

Once he gets a significant voice in the company (via more board members), he will force them to sell their Asian assets, quickly driving up the price to the desired range. Having loaded up at around $15 and assuming it hits $20, you're looking at a quick 33% ROI. That's what hedge funds do; they don't usually invest for the long haul.

Yea it's all a bit odd - it's certainly not right that Thompson lied on his resume, but it's not clear why Loeb as a stakeholder in a fragile company would want to hurt it further.

He runs a hedge fund - someone should investigate whether he has a short position on the stock.

"Loeb, chief executive of hedge fund Third Point, which holds 5.8 percent of Yahoo's shares"

"Yahoo, whose revenue slid by more than a fifth last year"

Loeb might just be looking for a scapegoat.

I'm not sure what you're implying. He doesn't run Yahoo. He makes no managerial decisions. He doesn't even sit on Yahoo's board.

But he's responsible for his fund investing a huge amount in a bad stock. He's probably trying to find a scapegoat for that decision.

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