• William Laraque, Managing Director at US-International Trade Services


• 04.12.2015 12:00 am
undisclosed

Yahoo's missed opportunity is in not creating a secure platform for the conduct of international trade. Buying, selling of goods and services through a portal and a platform which contains all of the support services as depicted in the following graphic and the related portal would have been a major money-maker for Yahoo and a decided opportunity for the U.S. The platform would also have been used to process cross-border investments. 

Yahoo's ownership of 15% of Alibaba is an opportunity for Yahoo executives to learn about trade, trade platforms, support services, logistics and trade finance,  all basic services provided by Alibaba. Alibaba provides all of services profitably and the market cap of Yahoo's 15% holding in Alibaba amounts to $31.8 billion which is nearly equivalent to the total current $34 billion market  cap of Yahoo itself. Yahoo could have utilized its ownership in Alibaba to expand on providing global trade services and doing it right. Alibaba's credibility is compromised by the rash of Chinese-made counterfeit goods it is marketing and selling. The issue is not the $10 billion in taxes which Yahoo would have engendered in selling its stake in Alibaba. There was never a consciousness about trade, trade platforms for conducting trade at Yahoo. The lack of global leadership at Yahoo is symptomatic of America's lack of vision.

Marissa Mayer was brought on to take Yahoo in a new direction, to compete with Google and Facebook. Fintech and international trade conducted with a client-facing and secure back-office platform would certainly have provided such a direction. The leadership at Yahoo would first have to regard and value the opportunity provided by the huge current and future flows in goods, services and investment provided by global trade. The U.S. software industry is imbued with a Silicon Valley myopia which does not understand international trade, nor does it perceive  and envision the global economic opportunity in trade.