Friday, October 15, 2010

YAHOO SET TO BE ACQUIRED?

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a group of private-equity firms are considering a bid for Yahoo.  One of the scenarios has them joining forces with AOL to buy Yahoo.  At this point, no one has approached Yahoo so it appears this is in the preliminary talks state.

Yahoo has retained Goldman Sachs to determine if the rumors are credible and what steps to take if they are.  Yahoo's stock rose 6% Wednesday in unusual trading and on Thursday morning shares spiked another 10% before slipping a bit and ending the day up 4.5% at $15.93.

There would be a number of high barriers to any deal.  Yahoo has a market capitalization of around $21 billion and even if they sold some of their business this could be more than some private-equity firms are willing pay.  Another hurdle is Yahoo's 40%, approximately $10 billion, stake in Alibaba, the Chinese internet group.  Some analyst have Yahoo selling back that stake to Alibaba, the rest of Yahoo being bought by AOL and taken private.  People familiar with the situation cautioned that a deal would be especially difficult to pull off given the complexities involved in spinning off Yahoo's Asian assets and avoiding a tax hit.

This is not the first time Yahoo has been rumored to be in talks of being acquired.  Previous reports show a deal was almost done with Microsoft. [WSJ]




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