Does Yahoo Have a Buyer?

Blackstone Group and Bain Capital are putting together a bid for all of Yahoo Inc with Asian partners in a deal that could value the Internet company at about $25 billion, a source familiar with the discussions said on Wednesday.

The potential bid by the group, which would include China’s Alibaba Group and Japan’s Softbank Corp, has not yet been finalized, the source and two other people familiar with the matter said.

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, whose primary interest is in buying back a 40 percent stake owned by Yahoo, is keeping its options open and said it has not decided whether to participate in a bid for all of Yahoo.

“Alibaba Group has not made a decision to be part of a whole company bid for Yahoo,” Alibaba Group spokesman, John Spelich, said in an emailed statement on Wednesday.

Yahoo’s shares, which closed at $15.71 on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday, gained 6.4 percent to $16.72 in after-hours trading, valuing the company at more than $20 billion.

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Will AOL Merge With Yahoo?

AOL is trying to engineer a merger with Yahoo in order to lower costs.

AOL’s CEO Tom Armstrong reportedly has been working hard to generate support from shareholders for a deal with Yahoo. According to Reuters, Armstrong is presenting the deal as an alternative to going it alone as an internet media company in order to reap cost and advertising reach benefits.

Apparently Armstrong is claiming that a merger with Yahoo, which itself is at the centre of acquisition rumours, would bring in savings of between $1bn and $1.5bn by combining datacentres and consolidating content on areas such as news, sports, entertainment and finance.

Since AOL was spun out of its disastrous merger with Time Warner, the firm has been trying to remake itself into an internet media company by buying popular websites such as The Huffington Post and Techcrunch. While many question whether that is a workable plan, the financials can’t mask the deep trouble AOL is in, with the company reporting a $11.8m loss for the second quarter.

While talk of AOL being bought up has cooled considerably in the last few months, the firm still has a few worthwhile assets. According to Reuters’ sources, shareholders like the idea of merging with Yahoo but are not convinced that Armstrong can pull it off.

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