How Yahoo Missed Its Asia Window (YHOO)

Double trouble for Jerry Yang: Not only are Yahoo shares getting hammered, but the company's stakes in Asian companies are getting killed, too. It owns 33% of Yahoo! Japan, 30% of Alibaba and 10% of Gmarket. And those shares are worth $2.2 billion less than the last time the company valued them, which means they're down 23% since the summer. Bloomberg:

The stocks slid on investor concern that Web advertising budgets will shrink amid the credit crisis, a trend that may only worsen.

The crunch limits the options left for Yang, who said he may sell or spin off the assets to shore up the stock after failing to reach a buyout agreement with Microsoft Corp. Yahoo kept the stakes even after billionaire Carl Icahn, a Yang critic who advocated their sale, joined the board in August, and Yahoo shares fell yesterday to the lowest in five years.

``It clearly looks like a big missed opportunity,'' said Sandeep Aggarwal, a Collins Stewart Plc analyst in San Francisco who rates the shares ``hold'' and doesn't own any. ``I don't know whether they can get a reasonable price, even if they can get a buyer.''

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