Adam Lehman, a former senior vice president of business affairs and development at AOL and once one of the company's top dealmakers, says that the move to float the AOL rumor showed "there aren't any compelling alternatives being bandied about in Yahoo!'s boardroom," adding that such a deal doesn't match up with Microsoft's offer.
"I don't think there's a clear and compelling vision for how the combination of the assets would drive better results for either," says Lehman, who from 1999 to 2002 led AOL's strategic and dealmaking team supporting the company's international expansion. "They also would need to overcome all the inherent complexities of any large-scale merger just to get the combination functioning."
