In response to Microsoft’s (MSFT) letter with a three-week deadline to act on Microsoft’s buyout offer, Yahoo’s (YHOO) CEO, Jerry Yang, insisted that Ballmer & Company raise its offer. Yang states that his company is not against a marriage with Microsoft, but he wants a bigger dowry.
Mutual funds, the large shareholders that control swaths of Yahoo! stock are already beginning to vocalize their desire for Yahoo! to accept an offer. One such institutional shareholder, Larry Haverty of Mario Gabelli’s GAMCO Investors, who manages a fund that owns 1.2 …

 
Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft (MSFT) puts on his best poker face with this letter to the Yahoo! (YHOO) board of directors. Ballmer isn’t known all over the world as an innovator, but as a former lawyer and one of the architects of Microsoft’s monopolistic business tactics, I’m sure he can hold his own at the negotiation table. Of course, that hasn’t been the case lately with the outlandish premiums he paid for aQuantive and Facebook. So maybe he’ll back off of this hard stance:
Dear Members of the Board:
It has …