Microsoft proposes a 44 billion dollar acquisition of Yahoo.

Microsoft today announced that it has made a proposal to the Yahoo's Board of Directors to acquire all the outstanding shares of Yahoo common stock. Microsoft has offered $31 a share which represents a total equity value of approximately $44.6 billion dollars.

Microsoft’s offer to Yahoo shareholders is a half cash half Microsoft stock option. Microsoft states in it's press release that the offer represents a 62% premium above the closing price of Yahoo's common shares on 31st of January this year.

“We have great respect for Yahoo!, and together we can offer an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online services market,” said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft. “We believe our combination will deliver superior value to our respective shareholders and better choice and innovation to our customers and industry partners.”

“Our lives, our businesses, and even our society have been progressively transformed by the Web, and Yahoo! has played a pioneering role by building compelling, high-scale services and infrastructure,” said Ray Ozzie, chief software architect at Microsoft. “The combination of these two great teams would enable us to jointly deliver a broad range of new experiences to our customers that neither of us would have achieved on our own.”

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