Yahoo and the Wrong Reasons to do M&A

AT&T, Verizon, Time Inc. and other suitors are thinking about bids for beleaguered Yahoo. And some advisors to these companies are ripe with reasons why Yahoo, battered as it is, could make an attractive target.

The two most common reasons I am hearing are that Yahoo and its dwindling user base will help “build out their online presence” or (a similar reason) “build out their vertical stack.” The stack here refers to ownership of both distribution and content.