YHOO dips below $12 a share

Has anyone else been watching the rapid descent of the Yahoo share price?

Well ... right now it's at $11.75 and its market cap is just north of $16b USD.

Blodget covers it here - http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/10/yahoo-cracks-12-valuation-now-officially-ridiculous

Lets not forget in February MSFT offered Yahoo! $31 per share ... and they declined. Since then the situation has gone from bad to worse.

What's causing the decline? The flogging the company is copping in search combined with large questions around Jerry Yang and Sue Decker and a very public stoush between those 2 and Carl Icahn earlier in the year. The Google AdSense distro deal being stalled wouldn't be helping either, nor would over 100 senior exec defections in the past 18 months.

Key thing to remember is in the US and most areas of Asia - Yahoo is still very strong. Very strong - a leader in many key categories across these large, critical markets. Even with this, many are expecting large layoffs and scaling back of operations. Some have predicted 20% of staff could go.

Have to wonder what might be about to happen in AU - where the company isn't a market leader and of late has seemed to lack longer term direction when compared to its competitors.