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By MADLEN READ, AP Business Writer
33 minutes ago
NEW YORK - Wall Street headed for a modestly lower open Wednesday, with investors awaiting data on pending home sales and labor costs.

The National Association of Realtors is expected to report that pending sales of existing homes declined in March, according to economists surveyed by Thomson Financial/IFR. And ahead of that report, the Labor Department is anticipated to release its first-quarter reading on worker productivity and costs — one of many key gauges of inflation.

Inflation has become a prime concern on Wall Street, given that oil has doubled over the past year to record levels above $122 a barrel on Tuesday. As a result, gasoline prices are also climbing further into record terrain, strapping debt-laden U.S. consumers with another financial burden.

Kansas City Federal Reserve President Thomas Hoenig in a speech late Tuesday cited inflation as his main worry.

The stock market will be closely watching the energy market’s reaction Wednesday to the government’s weekly report on U.S. fuel inventories. In premarket electronic trading Wednesday on the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures rose 2 cents to $121.86 a barrel after reaching $122.73 overnight.

Dow futures fell 24, or 0.18 percent, to 13,004. Standard & Poor’s 500 index futures fell 2.70, or 0.19 percent, to 1,418.00, and Nasdaq 100 index futures fell 6.25, or 0.31 percent, to 1,992.75.

The stock market rose moderately Tuesday despite the surge in oil prices, as bargain hunters bought up pummeled financial and housing-related stocks in the hopes for a late-2008 economic rebound.

In early trading Wednesday, gold prices fell, while the dollar rebounded against other major global currencies.

Bond prices edged slightly higher. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite its price, dipped to 3.91 percent from 3.92 percent late Tuesday.

In corporate news, Clearwire and Sprint Nextel Corp. are planning to merge their wireless broadband units to create a new $14.55 billion wireless communications company. The new company is getting a $3.2 billion investment from Intel Corp., Google Inc., Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc. and Bright House Networks.

Overseas, Japan’s stock market rose 0.38 percent. By afternoon trading in Europe, Britain’s FTSE index rose 0.46 percent, Germany’s DAX index rose 0.74 percent, and France’s CAC-40 rose 0.48 percent.

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On the Net:

New York Stock Exchange: http://www.nyse.com

Nasdaq Stock Market: http://www.nasdaq.com

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By YURI KAGEYAMA, AP Business Writer
Wed May 7, 12:55 AM ET
 
TOKYO - Toyota Motor Corp., the world’s second-biggest automaker by annual vehicle sales, is raising its prices on some U.S. models later this month amid increased worries about its profit growth in the American market.
 
The price increases, which will start in the middle of May, include a hike of $200 on the 2008 Yaris sedan, which will cost $12,425. The 2009 Camry will go up $200 to $18,920, the automaker’s U.S. unit said in a statement released Friday.

The hybrid Camry, introduced as a 2007 model in late 2006, will cost $300 more, at $25,650, Toyota said.

Like other Japanese automakers, Toyota is enjoying sales growth while American automakers are struggling. Soaring gas prices have increased demand for smaller, fuel-efficient cars that Japanese automakers are reputed for.

Toyota faces a challenge in maintaining profits partly because of the recent decline in the dollar, which erodes the value of overseas earnings of Japanese exporters. Worries are also rising about how a U.S. economic slowdown may hurt sales.

Toyota is set to release financial results Thursday, when it could report its first profit drop in nearly a decade.

But it’s still faring better than its U.S. rivals. GM lost $3.3 billion in the first quarter. Ford had a surprise profit of $100 million for the same period but expects to lose money this year as the U.S. auto market deteriorates.

Atsushi Kawai, auto analyst with Mizuho Investors Securities in Tokyo, said the price increases of about 1 percent won’t make up for the damage Toyota’s bottom line is expected to suffer from the weak dollar. The dollar, trading at about 114 yen last year, fell below 100 yen in March and is now trading at around 105 yen.

But he noted Toyota raises prices about this time every year, and the hike was routine.

“Outside people are the ones giving special meaning to the decision” because of the concerns about the U.S. market, he said in a telephone interview. “It is a fact that Toyota is losing some of its momentum.”

General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC saw double-digit U.S. sales declines last month compared with April 2007. Toyota’s U.S. April sales, meanwhile, edged up 3 percent. But during the same period, Honda Motor Co.’s and Nissan Motor Co.’s U.S. sales were up about twice that much.

Nissan already raised U.S. prices in April by $170 to $480 on models including the Versa Hatchback, Altima sedan, 350Z Roadster and the Pathfinder sport utility vehicle. Honda said it has no plans so far to raise its U.S. prices.

Kawai said more time was needed to assess whether Toyota sales will continue to lag even after new models, including the remodeled Corolla, come out.

Toyota is also raising the U.S. prices of some Lexus luxury models. For example, the price of the Lexus IS 350 entry sports sedan will rise $300 to $36,305. The pricing of the 2008 Lexus IS F high-performance sports sedan won’t change, Toyota said.

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EL SEGUNDO, Calif. - Digital television provider DirecTV says first-quarter earnings rose 10 percent, and it will raise up to $2.5 billion of debt to buy back up to $3 billion of its own stock.

El Segundo, Calif.-based DirecTV says net income climbed to $371 million, or 32 cents per share, from $336 million, or 27 cents per share, a year ago.

Revenue climbed 17 percent to $4.59 billion from $3.91 billion, as demand for HD and DVR services drove a 14 percent rise in DirecTV U.S. sales.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial expected profit of 31 cents per share on revenue of $4.47 billion.

The company will sell $1.35 billion of senior notes and borrow about $1 billion under its credit line to fund the buyback.

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AP Business Writer Jennifer Malloy

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By MICHELLE CHAPMAN, AP Business Writer
49 minutes ago
 NEW YORK - Clearwire and Sprint Nextel are planning to merge their wireless broadband units to create a new $14.55 billion wireless communications company.
 
The new company, to be named Clearwire, will receive a $3.2 billion investment from Intel Corp., Google Inc., Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc. and Bright House Networks. The investment is based on a target price of $20 per Clearwire share and will give the companies a 22 percent stake in the new venture.

Overland Park, Kan.-based Sprint Nextel Corp. will be majority owner with a 51 percent equity stake, while existing Clearwire shareholders will receive about 27 percent interest.

Clearwire, which will concentrate on rolling out a mobile network based on the emerging WiMAX standard, will also receive an investment from Trilogy Equity Partners, led by U.S. wireless industry veteran John Stanton.

WiMAX promises faster download speeds than the latest networks run by cell-phone operators, and it’s even seen as a potential competitor to fixed-line broadband.

Rivals such as AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless have eschewed WiMax, opting instead for upgrades to their current wireless broadband networks and a future technology called Long Term Evolution.

Clearwire already provides wireless Internet service in some parts of the country, using a WiMax-like technology. The company had a subscriber base of nearly 400,000 wireless broadband customers at the end of 2007.

The new company is looking for a U.S. network deployment between 120 million and 140 million people by the end of 2010.

Sprint and Clearwire, a startup founded by cellular pioneer Craig McCaw, had already announced their plans to build out networks using WiMAX technology, but had been looking for outside funding.

The new company will be led by Clearwire Chief Executive Benjamin Wolff, with Sprint Chief Technology Officer Barry West serving as president. West also leads Sprint’s XOHM division.

The Kirkland, Wash.-based venture will house workers from Clearwire and Sprint’s XOHM unit and will have research and development and other operations located in Herndon, Va. Its board will consist of 13 members at the start. Sprint will name seven of them, which will include at least one independent director. The investor group will name four members, including one independent. Eagle River, a private investment company controlled by wireless veteran Craig McCaw, will name one member, with the remaining independent member selected by Clearwire’s nominating committee.

McCaw is expected to serve as non-executive chairman. Other anticipated board members include Sprint President and CEO Dan Hesse, Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts, Time Warner Cable President and CEO Glen Britt and Stanton.

The deal, which has been approved by the boards of all companies involved, is expected to close during the fourth quarter. The company will apply for a Nasdaq listing under the ticker “CLWR.”

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By GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 48 minutes ago
VIENNA, Austria - Oil prices steadied Wednesday after hitting a record near $123 a barrel in the previous day’s session on worries over supply disruptions.
Prices were supported by concerns about supply disruptions in Nigeria, where production at a Royal Dutch Shell PLC facility was cut after a weekend attack. The main militant group in Nigeria’s oil-rich southern region said Tuesday it is willing to cease hostilities if the federal government allows conflict mediation by a former U.S. president.

A string of pipeline bombings in recent weeks has cut oil production in Nigeria by tens of thousands of barrels per day, contributing to the sharp rise in oil prices. The country is Africa’s largest producer and a major U.S. supplier.

Light, sweet crude for June delivery rose 5 cents to $121.89 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange by noon in Europe. The contract on Tuesday soared to a record $122.73 a barrel before retreating to settle at $121.84, up $1.87.

“Clearly there’s a lot of concerns about supply at the moment. The market’s very jittery on any type of news, particularly supply disruptions,” said Mark Pervan, senior commodity strategist at ANZ Bank in Melbourne.

“There are many in the market who think these prices are as good as it gets and are positioned to see lower prices but we continue to see one-off supply issues keeping prices high,” Pervan said.

The rise in crude futures also gained momentum Tuesday as investors bought on a Goldman Sachs prediction that oil prices could rise to $150 to $200 within two years.

Still, expectations that U.S. crude supplies increased last week were helping to limit oil’s rise ahead of the release of the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s report on fuel inventories later Wednesday.

Analysts surveyed by energy research firm Platts expected the report to show that crude oil inventories rose by 1.5 million barrels last week.

Gasoline stocks were projected to drop by 500,000 barrels, according to the Platts survey. Inventories of distillates, which include heating oil and diesel, were expected to have risen by 1.3 million barrels.

In its newsletter, Vienna’s JBC Energy noted that the latest EIA forecasts on demand — an estimated 170,000 barrels a day lower in the second quarter of this year over the same period last year — also worked to keep a lid on prices and offered its own, lower forecast decline; 230,000 barrels a day.

In other Nymex trading, heating oil and gasoline futures were both up slightly at $3.3568 and $3.1024 a gallon. Natural gas futures were flat at $11.146 per 1,000 cubic feet.

In London, Brent crude futures rose 4 cents to $120.35 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.

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Associated Press Writer Gillian Wong contributed to this report from Singapore.

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By MARCY GORDON, AP Business Writer
57 minutes ago
 WASHINGTON - The steeper slide in home prices is accelerating the pace of foreclosures, Fannie Mae said Tuesday as it outlined plans for shoring up its finances following a $2.2 billion first quarter loss.
While the nation’s largest buyer of home loans will slice its dividend and attempt to raise $6 billion, mostly by issuing new shares, federal regulators loosened Fannie’s capital requirements as the government looks for ways to bolster the housing market.

Moody’s Investors Service downgraded the company’s financial strength rating because of the potential for further losses from soured home loans over the next two years, but investors pushed Fannie’s shares higher, in anticipation of the bigger role Fannie will play in the mortgage market.

Fannie’s president and CEO, Daniel Mudd, said during a conference call with analysts that “right now we are in the belly of the cycle,” meaning losses from defaulted mortgages are likely to worsen next year.

Mudd said home prices in the January-March period fell “faster than anyone anticipated,” and the company now foresees a nationwide drop of 7 percent to 9 percent in 2008. Previously, Fannie had been looking this year for a drop of 5 percent to 7 percent.

As a result, Fannie said it expects to lose money this year on 13 to 17 of every 1,000 mortgages held on its $3 trillion book, up from its earlier expectation of 11 to 15 and a steep increase from four to six in 2007.

Despite the gloomy outlook, Fannie’s federal regulator, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight said it will reduce the capital cushion the company has to maintain. After it raises an anticipated $6 billion in a stock sale, Fannie will be required to keep surplus capital of 15 percent of their total mortgage debt, down from the current 20 percent. Another five-point cut will come in September, provided there is “no material adverse change” in the company’s regulatory compliance.

Fannie’s capital was at $42.7 billion as of March 31, down from $45.4 billion at year-end 2007.

The agency’s director, James B. Lockhart, said capital requirements were eased because Fannie has improved internal financial controls following a multibillion-dollar accounting scandal in 2004.

Housing slump news came apace Tuesday, as the country’s biggest homebuilder, Dallas-based D.R. Horton Inc., reported that hefty charges and property writedowns swung it to a second-quarter loss of $1.31 billion, or $4.14 a share, from a year-earlier profit of $51.7 million, or 16 cents a share.

The government has come to rely increasingly on Fannie and Freddie Mac, its smaller government-chartered sibling, as other lenders have shied away from the risk-heavy market for mortgage securities. In the first quarter, Fannie’s estimated market share of the new securities backed by home mortgages that are issued increased to 50 percent.

Some critics have said that allowing the companies to take on more debt could threaten the global financial system.

The Bush administration has been pushing for tightened government reins over Fannie and Freddie, and legislation doing that has become a key bargaining chip for congressional Democrats seeking Republican support for a $300 billion housing rescue plan.

Following an initial steep decline, Fannie shares jumped 5 percent, or $1.46, to $29.75 in afternoon trading. They are at roughly half their value of a year ago.

The company’s estimated fair value of net assets as of March 31 was $12.2 billion, down 66 percent from $35.8 billion at the end of December. The huge decline was attributed to falling home prices and changes made to reflect new accounting methods. The assets are not counted toward the overall loss.

Fannie’s first-quarter loss contrasts with a profit of $961 million in the January-March period last year. The company reported Tuesday that the early 2008 loss was equivalent to $2.57 a share, far steeper than the 81 cents per share that analysts polled by Thomson Financial had expected it to lose. Fannie earned 85 cents a share a year earlier.

Reflecting the ravages of the housing crisis, Washington-based Fannie was forced to set aside $3.2 billion to account for bad loans. The losses were greatest in the hardest-hit states: California, Florida, Michigan and Ohio.

Revenue rose 38 percent in the first quarter, to $3.8 billion, bolstered by increases in fees that Fannie charges lenders to guarantee mortgages and in interest income.

On Tuesday, Fannie said it would cut its dividend, starting in the third quarter, from 35 cents to 25 cents a share, freeing up around $390 million a year.

The company already had slashed the dividend 30 percent in December, when it also raised $7 billion in capital in a special stock sale.
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FRANKFURT, Germany - Deutsche Telekom AG is considering a bid for Sprint Nextel Corp., according to a media report Monday.
 
Bonn-based Deutsche Telekom did not immediately comment on the report in The Wall Street Journal. Were it to make such a deal, it would catapult its T-Mobile wireless unit to the top spot in the U.S. market.

In its report, The Wall Street Journal said deliberations were at “a preliminary stage and management may very well turn away,” according to the people it quoted.

Any bid, the paper’s sources said, “could still be weeks, or even months away.”

Sprint Nextel is the third-biggest provider of cell phone services in the U.S. and has a market capitalization of approximately $22 billion. AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless are the top two U.S. providers.

T-Mobile is No. 4 in the U.S. market, but the unit has proved key to Deutsche Telekom, given that just slightly more than 50 percent of its annual sales now comes from markets outside of Germany, its home base. Last year, the company posted sales of 65.2 billion euros ($100.8 billion) worldwide on 19.3 billion euros in operating profit.

In 2007, T-Mobile’s sales rose to 19.3 billion euros ($29.8 billion) compared with 17.1 billion euros in 2006. It wrapped up its $1.6 billion deal to buy SunCom Wireless Holdings Inc. in February.

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On the Net:

http://www.deutschetelekom.com

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By GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 8 minutes ago
 
VIENNA, Austria - Oil prices rose Monday, supported by weekend news of an attack on a Nigerian oil installation, but with gains limited by a stronger U.S. dollar.
 
Royal Dutch Shell PLC spokesman Precious Okolobo said Saturday that attackers hit a flow station belonging to Shell’s joint venture in southern Nigeria and that some oil production had been shut down.

He gave no further details. Flow stations are intersections for pipelines carrying oil from wells to export terminals.

“The geopolitical news (out of Nigeria) is supportive of oil pricing and causes investors to come back into oil,” said Victor Shum, an analyst with Purvin & Gertz in Singapore. However, “the strengthening dollar has capped further gains in oil,” he said.

Light, sweet crude for June delivery rose 58 cents to $116.90 a barrel by noon in European electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose $3.80 to settle at $116.32 a barrel on Friday.

Crude futures soared Friday after Turkish airstrikes on Kurdish rebel bases in Iraq injected supply concerns into the market.

Also supporting oil prices were concerns about Iran after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Sunday that his country will not bend to international pressure and give up its nuclear program. Iran is the second largest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

When conflict breaks out or political tensions rise in the Middle East, investors often buy oil on the belief that supplies could be disrupted.

“The market is supported by strong commodity index fund buying that happened on Friday, driven primarily by a belief that there would be supply issues in the long term,” Shum said.

At the same time, an employment report from the U.S. Labor Department also gave investors reason to be more optimistic about the U.S. economy — and raised the floor on prices. The U.S. is the world’s largest consumer of oil and any drop in demand there can have a global impact on prices.

Vienna’s JBC Energy described the relatively positive employment figures as “the main bullish factor in the market.”

“Positive news on the U.S. economy eased concerns about a recession and made further (U.S. interest) rate cuts … unlikely,” said Monday’s JBC newsletter. “Theoretically, this would decrease the amount of money invested in oil as a hedge for the falling dollar.”

Oil prices dropped to nearly $110 a barrel on Thursday, helped by the rising U.S. dollar.

A rising dollar undercuts the appeal of commodities such as oil as a hedge against inflation, and makes oil more expensive to investors overseas.

In other Nymex trading, heating oil futures added more than a penny to $3.2305 a gallon while gasoline prices were flat at $2.9664 gallon. Natural gas futures rose more than 6 cents to $10.84 per 1,000 cubic feet.

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Associated Press Writer Gillian Wong contributed to this report from Singapore.

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CAMARILLO, Calif. - The national average price for regular gasoline rose about 15 cents in the last two weeks, according to a survey.
 
The average price of self-serve regular gasoline on Friday was $3.62 a gallon, up 15 cents from two weeks ago. Mid-grade was at $3.74 and premium was $3.85. That’s all according to the Lundberg Survey of 7,000 stations nationwide released Sunday.

Regular gasoline is up 55 cents since 2008 began.

Of the cities surveyed, the cheapest price was in Cheyenne, Wyo., where a gallon of regular cost $3.39, on average. The highest average was in San Francisco at $3.95.

Across California, the statewide average for a gallon of regular was $3.90, mid-grade was at $4.01 and premium at $4.11.

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On the Net:

Lundberg Survey: http://www.lundbergsurvey.com

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SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo Inc.’s shares tumbled by more than 23 percent in premarket trading Monday after Microsoft Corp. withdrew a $47.5 billion takeover offer for the Internet pioneer.

Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang is convinced that the company he started in a Silicon Valley trailer 14 years ago is worth more than the $47.5 billion that Microsoft Corp. had offered for the Internet pioneer.

Now he may only have a few months to convince Wall Street that his rebuff of Microsoft’s takeover bid was a smart move — and if he can’t, analysts won’t be surprised if Yang is either replaced as CEO or forced to consider accepting a lower offer if Microsoft comes knocking at his door again.

“This squarely puts the pressure on Jerry Yang to deliver results and shareholder value,” Standard & Poor’s equity analyst Scott Kessler said. “You are going to see a lot of shareholders just throwing in the towel because they are going to realize it’s going to take awhile for the stock to get back to where it was Friday.”

The backlash is expected to begin Monday when Kessler and other analysts believe Yahoo’s stock price will surrender most, if not all, of its 50 percent gain since Microsoft made its initial offer Jan. 31. The anticipated sell-off would leave Yahoo’s market value hovering around $30 billion.

Yahoo shares tumbled more than 23 percent, or $6.67, to $22 in premarket trading. In Frankfurt, Germany, two hours before trading opened in New York, Yahoo shares fell 18.6 percent to 14.74 euros ($22.79).

Microsoft’s shares rose 4.3 percent, or $1.26, to $30.50 in premarket trading. The shares had declined 10 percent to $29.24 since the bid, reflecting concerns that the proposed marriage would turn into a complicated mess that would enable Google Inc. to grow even stronger.

Yahoo shares finished last week at $28.67, slightly less than the $29.40 per share that Microsoft was offering before Chief Executive Steve Ballmer agreed to raise the offer to $33 per share in a last-ditch effort to get a deal done.

Disillusioned shareholders are bound to question whether the rejection of Microsoft’s sweetened offer was driven more by emotion and ego than sound business sense.

“Clearly there’s frustration,” said Darren Chervitz, co-manager of the Jacob Internet Fund, which owns Yahoo stock. “I am not even sure if Yahoo cares about its shareholders because they didn’t show much regard for shareholders’ best interests in this process.”

Despite such negative sentiment, Yahoo shares are unlikely to immediately fall back to their $19.18 pre-bid price, partly because some investors may still be holding out hope that the software maker will renew its takeover attempt if Yahoo continues to struggle.

Accompanied by fellow Yahoo co-founder David Filo, Yang flew to Seattle on Saturday to inform Ballmer that the company wouldn’t sell for less than $37 per share — a price that Yahoo’s stock hasn’t reached since January 2006.

Analysts and investors were left to wonder why the two sides couldn’t compromise at $35 per share.

“They really didn’t seem that far apart,” Chervitz said. “There is probably blame to go around on both sides, but I think most of it is in Yang’s hands.”

To win the faith of shareholders, Yang will have to execute a turnaround plan that he began drawing up nearly a year ago after he replaced Terry Semel as CEO amid shareholder angst about the company’s financial malaise.

Ballmer also will be under the gun to prove he can come up with another way to challenge Google’s dominance of the Internet’s lucrative search and advertising markets.

The unsolicited bid was widely seen as Ballmer’s admission that Microsoft needed Yahoo’s help to upgrade its unprofitable Internet division.

Analysts now expect Ballmer to use the money he had earmarked for the Yahoo acquisition to explore other possible deals with large Internet companies like Time Warner Inc.’s AOL and News Corp.’s MySpace and promising startups like Facebook Inc. and LinkedIn Corp. Microsoft already owns a 1.6 percent in Facebook, the second-largest social network behind MySpace.

But Ballmer is unlikely to be under as much duress as Yang, 39, who has promised that Yahoo’s development of a more sophisticated and far-flung Internet advertising platform will produce net revenue growth of at least 25 percent in 2009 and 2010.

That would be a dramatic improvement, considering that Yahoo’s revenue rose by 12 percent last year and is expected to grow at about the same pace this year.

Analysts, though, are skeptical about whether Yahoo will be able to hit those targets, raising the chances for a shareholder rebellion if the company stumbles in the next two quarters — a distinct possibility if advertisers curtail spending in a shaky U.S. economy, as many analysts fear.

As it is, Yang and the rest of Yahoo’s board almost certainly will face more lawsuits from incensed shareholders.

Even some of Yahoo’s own employees may be irritated because virtually all of them own stock options.

What’s more, Microsoft had planned to offer $1.5 billion in retention packages to the thousands of Yahoo employees it wanted to stay on after a takeover.

To help boost its short-term profits and its stock price, Yahoo is widely expected to form a long-term advertising partnership with Google.

Although the final details are still being ironed out, Yahoo wants to hire Google to place some of the text-based ads that appear alongside the search results on its Web site. It’s a task that Google already handles for scores of Web sites, including AOL and Ask.com.

Both Yahoo and Google have said they were encouraged with the results of a two-week trial run completed last month.

But turning to Google for help would be a humbling step for Yahoo after spending more than $2 billion to acquire and build its own technology.

An alliance between Google and Yahoo also would face antitrust hurdles because the two companies combined control more than 80 percent of the U.S. search advertising market.

Although Google’s superior technology would help boost Yahoo’s profits in the short term, some analysts worry it could be a mistake for Yahoo to surrender any control over such a lucrative piece of the online ad market.

Yahoo also has been exploring a possible merger with AOL’s Internet operations but may now have to contend with a competing offer from Microsoft.

Yahoo also might attempt to placate shareholders by buying back stock.

Kessler believes Yang should use some of his estimated $1.9 billion fortune to personally buy more Yahoo stock even though he already owns 54.1 million shares, or 3.9 percent of the company.

“Jerry Yang really needs to put his money where his mouth is,” Kessler said. “If he really thinks Yahoo is worth $37 (per share), then he needs to step up and buy some shares when they are in the low $20.”

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