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Terry Semels Star Search

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by Kevin Maney
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Jun 02 2008 12:00am EDT

Terry Semel's Star Search

Yahoo ex-CEO Terry Semel might be getting back into the business he should've never left. Semel is trying to buy giant talent agency IMG, the New York Post reports. IMG is now owned by private investor Ted Forstmann, and would probably cost Semel $3 billion.

Semel spent 24 years at Warner Bros., rising to chairman before leaving in 2001 to take Yahoo's CEO job. At first he was cheered as a new kind of dealmaker who was going to turn Yahoo into a media giant, but as time went on Semel seemed to have little understanding of the uniqueness of the Web as a content delivery medium. At industry events, he seemed out of place. Yahoo's stock was about $14 in January 2001, after crashing during the dot-com meltdown. By the time Semel resigned, the stock was up to $27. Arch-rival Google, meanwhile, saw its stock go from $108 in August 2004 to more than $575 today.

Earlier this year, Semel reconstituted his investment company, Windsor Media Capital. The IMG deal would apparently be through that firm.

 

-- Kevin Maney

 

 

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