Is Daily Mail Bidding for Yahoo?
Daily Mail, a parent company of one of the most popular newspapers in the UK, is reportedly in advanced talks with various private equity firms in the hope of placing a bid for Yahoo Inc.
According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, the Daily Mail & General Trust PLC's prospective bid may come in two varieties, the first one of which is when an equity partner will acquire the core web business of Yahoo while the Daily Mail will be taking over the media and news components. For the second variety meanwhile, the equity partner will still be acquiring the core web business while at the same time will merge its media and news branches with the current and existing online operations of the Daily Mail. In this kind of setup, the units subjected to the merge will then be used to form a new company, which in turn will be run by the Mail.
There actually has been little talk about Yahoo being up for sale, up until now when the Daily Mail became a player. Accordingly, other major players, Time Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. are also trying to look for its own private equity firm to work on for a bid, with the focus on Yahoo's core internet businesses.
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The same WSJ report revealed that Yahoo has set the deadline for the preliminary bids for April 18, which is a few days from now.
According to multiple sources, Yahoo has already conducted initial talks and meetings with the major players in the potential sale of the company, including CBS Corporation, IAC/InterActiveCorp, and Verizon, but the same sources say that The Mail hasn't approached or contacted any of Yahoo's representatives as of this writing.
At present, the news and media properties include Yahoo Finance, Yahoo News, and Yahoo Sports.
