Imagine for a moment being an institutional investor, with a big stake in YHOO; say, more than 100k shares. You'd be ishtting your pants, scrambling to find ways to dump the stock without putting the price down on yourself.
You know that headline is coming soon: "Verizon Yahoo Deal Scrapped," or "Verizon-Yahoo deal enters price renegotiation," "according to people familiar with the matter..." or something like that.
They're calling YHOO a "Pig in a Poke" that is, they don't really know what they're getting. If there's one thing that investors, board members, and executives hate, it's not knowing the facts. In many ways, it's worse than knowing actual bad news! It's like not knowing a medical diagnosis. Who would buy something like that?
Imagine if I was trying to sell you a car, and said, "Well, the transmission might be bad... I'm not sure."
In other words, the minute the ink is dry on the sale papers, and you drive it off the lot, the clutch is going to blow out, and you'll get stuck with a huge bill. Like, the legal accountability Verizon will assume for identity theft.