A “simply say no” argument isn’t always in shareholders’ best interests, because board members can use it even if an offer is made at a large premium to the existing stock price. A number of examples of firms employing this strategy to stay strong and reject offer that, in retrospect, they would have been better off taking add to the dissatisfaction. Yahoo, for example, fought off a $44.6 billion proposal from Microsoft (MSFT) in 2008 with a “simply say no” strategy, only to sell off its core company for $4.8 billion many years later.