Well, it’s official. Yahoo! has blown the deal with Microsoft. Yesterday afternoon before the official announcement was made, it was obvious that the cat was already out of the bag. Many stories began to break about the deal falling through, and Yahoo! shares dropped over 10%. The stock value had topped at around $30 in the middle of February. Since then, Jerry Yang and the rest of the Yahoo! leadership have managed to wipe nearly $9 billion in market value, as it became more and more apparent the deal wasn’t going to happen.

I have no doubt that the class action suits will continue and there will most certainly be more to come. Unfortunately, I do not believe anything good can come of them, as the damage has already been done. It may be a very long time before Yahoo! ever reaches $30 again, unless they can actually make good on the promises that were made in March.

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Back Assward Yahoo! Class Action Lawsuits

Time for Microsoft to Go Hostile

Yahoo! Attempts to Increase Market Value with Investor Presentation

The Prosper Days 2008 videos are up on the Prosper website. There is a wealth of information to be gotten from these videos, so be sure to check them out. I was fortunate enough to participate in the Blogger panel. It was an excellent experience and I hope I have the opportunity to be on another such panel some day. All-in-all I think I did pretty well and brought some value to the discussion. There was one moment early on while I was speaking where RateLadder said something that really threw me for a loop. I wasn’t sure if I had misspoken, if he was disagreeing with my statement, if he was tossing in a joke, or what. I recovered as best I could and pressed on.

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The 2008 Prosper Days Blogger Panel

LendingClub vs. Prosper

My First Post on the Official Prosper Blog

TechCrunch has an article about a new p2p student lending site called GreenNote. In addition to facing many of the same challenges that await Fynanz, GreenNote will have additional obstacles to overcome in order to attract investors. Perhaps the biggest challenge is that the interest rate is not set by lender bidding and is fixed across all loans (currently 6.8%, the rate of a Federal Unsubsidized Stafford Loan). Not only will GreenNote have a hard time competing with Fynanz in terms of the potential returns for investors, but Fynanz also provides some protection against defaults by guaranteeing at least 50% of the principal on defaulted loans. GreenNote provides no such guarantee.

Given that they do offer a very good interest rate for students, they will surely have no problems attracting borrowers. However, I think GreenNote has a long road ahead if they intend to attract enough investors in order to meet the demand. Unless they can eventually insure part of the loan principal as Fynanz does or provide a secondary market for liquidity, I have serious doubts as to whether they will be able to compete with Fynanz and survive the long road to profitability.

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New Peer-to-peer Lender for Student Loans

Having Trouble Refinancing? Borrow from a Rich Friend or Family Member

Prosper Investing Tips and Testimonial