From the reason they quoted ("the $31 per share offer massively undervalues Yahoo!"), my guess is that this 'rejection' is just the first play in a dance over the price, which I'm sure Microsoft was prepared for, even if it bid high initially in an attempt to appear the White Knight.
If Yahoo!'s board really did not want to sell, it would have cited lack of benefits to the merger, culture differences, or technology platform differences, which are all real concerns.
Their risk is that if they ask too much, then Microsoft will slink away, which will probably crush their share price for a while. Hopefully some people had options that they could excercise under the recent 40% jump in Yahoo!'s shares, although considering it's decline in the last year, even that seems unlikely.
Husband of a friend works in management over at Yahoo. She says the word is around the water cooler, that Yahoo's looking for around $36 a share, and then will sell.
Sounds like morale is pretty low, and sound like there's going to be a lot of engineers looking for new jobs soon. Or, a lot more startups rising for Yahoo's ashes.
If I were him, I would have been hoping they'd accept the first offer. There's a pretty good chance now that MS isn't going to go any higher (especially given what's happened to their stock since the bid became public news) and his shares are going to spiral into the abyss.
If Yahoo!'s board really did not want to sell, it would have cited lack of benefits to the merger, culture differences, or technology platform differences, which are all real concerns.
Their risk is that if they ask too much, then Microsoft will slink away, which will probably crush their share price for a while. Hopefully some people had options that they could excercise under the recent 40% jump in Yahoo!'s shares, although considering it's decline in the last year, even that seems unlikely.