Tuesday, January 08, 2008

RUMOR MILL: Monster.com (NASDAQ:MNST)

Hearing News Corp's (NYSE:NWS) Rupert Murdoch has sent a letter to Monster.com (NASDAQ:MNST) board offering $4.8 bln for the co.

Notablecalls: Well, the rumor makes some sense here. First, as I have said before, I do think MNST is a co that is going to be sold. Sal Iannuzzi was hired as Chairman and Chief Executive Office in April 2007 to set the co up just for that. Remember, he was the one who sold Symbol Tech to Motorola (NYSE:MOT) in Jan 2007.

Ianuzzi brought in his boy, Timothy Yates as CFO in June 2007. Note that Yates had served as the CFO of Symbol Tech.

Now, Murdoch is a savvy guy. His acquisition of MySpace in 2005 is a perfect example of that. I think he knew that the valuation of MNST would come down as growth slowed. So he patiently waited.

He knew that Gannett (NYSE:GCI), the co-owner or CareerBuilder.com would love to buy Monster.com but didn't have the financing. Tribune, the other co-owner of CareerBuilder.com had too much debt and stuff going on with the Zell bid.

The only real threat is Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) that would also love to buy MNST to grow their HotJobs offering. But no news from there.

Anyway, that's my 2c.


Hope it helps.

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