Yahoo! has sent a letter to its shareholders warning them about the agenda presented by Microsoft and investor Carl Icahn in their joint-pursuit of the company.

It suggested in the document that Mr Icahn's plans would serve no long-term benefit to the firm, as he is solely interested in quickly recovering any investment.

The letter continued: "Your board of directors believes strongly that the Icahn-Microsoft agenda - as presented to us jointly last week - will destroy stockholder value at Yahoo!, serving only their very narrow special interests, clearly not your interests."

Yahoo! has stated that it is willing to sell the whole company to Microsoft for no less than $33 (£16.5) per share.

On Monday, Yahoo! revealed that it had rejected a joint-offer from Mr Icahn and Microsoft for its internet search business.

Chairman of Yahoo! Roy Bostock made a firm statement in which he said that the offer was not in the best interests of the company.

According to a recent survey by Connect, the two biggest IT headaches for businesses were 'everyday hassles with IT' (37 per cent) and 'security concerns' (32 per cent) In a recent survey of SMEs for Connect, the two most important benefits of outsourcing were 'guaranteed response times' and 'allowing in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic issues'