One of United Kingdom's most popular newspaper, Daily Mail, is eyeing bid to acquire Yahoo.
Daily Mail & General Trust (DMGT) and associates are said to be engaged in talks with private equity firms regarding the possible bids for one of Internet's pioneers.
A spokesman from DailyMail.com says the discussions are still in its early stages thus there are no positive assurances yet regarding any transactions.
Possible Deals
If and when Daily Mails submits a bid, there could be two possibilities. One is for a private equity firm to acquire Yahoo's core web business and Daily Mail being in charge of the news and media services of the website. The other possible scenario is for a private equity company to buy the core business and combine the news and media features of the website with Daily Mail's online activities.
Yahoo's Deadline For Bids
The initial deadline for companies to submit bids was April 11. However, Yahoo extended it to one more week, giving potential buyers more time to present their bids.
"Yahoo has set an April 18 deadline for bids," the company says.
Aside from the main business, the bid would include Yahoo's vertical services such as Yahoo Sports and Yahoo Finance.
Yahoo's Decline
Yahoo was once a powerful force in the early era of Internet business. In fact, about 1 billion people uses it. However, it got lost in the race with Google when it comes to online searches and has been constantly suffering from its online advertising business.
Yahoo was placed under the management of Marissa Mayer in 2012. Her switch from Google to Yahoo sparked new hope for the latter, but still, nothing seemed to be working.
Yahoo shares have dropped by approximately 30 percent since the latter part of the year 2014. The decline has become very apparent as the company continued to painstakingly revive its revenue growth. This all the more put pressure on Mayer to take significant measures.
Yahoo started exploring possible strategies, including selling its core assets. By February, names of possible buyers such as Verizon and Google cropped up, as well as other private equity firms.
Reports say about 40 firms have expressed their interest to see the possibilities that Yahoo has to offer. The question now is which or how many among these prospective buyers are armed with a concrete plan to seriously acquire Yahoo?
