Activist investor Starboard Value LP asked Yahoo Inc to drop plans to sell its stake in Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd due to tax concerns, and instead urged the company to sell its core search and display advertising businesses.
Yahoo’s current net cash holding and the funds raised from a sale of the business could be returned to shareholders through buybacks and dividends, Jeff Smith, Starboard’s head, said in a letter to Yahoo on Thursday.
Starboard, calling itself a “significant shareholder” in Yahoo, said it made the letter public as efforts to talk with the company privately over the past year had not yielded positive results.
