Buyers start to line up for Yahoo! after the sacking of Carol Bartz
Will we see a bidding war for one of the internet's great pioneers?
One is private equity firm Silver Lake, which has already approached Yahoo about a potential bid, said the Times, quoting two people close to Yahoo .
Silver Lake, working with the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, has been "quietly talking about a bid for the last six months," one person said. Other potential bidders for Yahoo or its assets include Microsoft and the China-based Alibaba Group. Yahoo, once king of the Internet has fallen behind in the US in recent years. While rivals like Google and Facebook have boomed , Yahoo has struggled . Last week, the board fired chief executive Carol Bartz - less than three years in the job - by phone. Yahoo’s board discussed Silver Lake’s approach during its meeting on Wednesday and hired Allen & Company as its investment bank for a continuing review of Yahoo’s business. Yahoo’s Asian assets include a 40 percent stake in the Alibaba Group, a Chinese e-commerce company, and about 35 percent in Yahoo Japan. Many analysts consider those stakes to be worth more than the sum of the rest of its operations. Any deal, analysts say, will require a lot of initial financial backing. Yahoo’s market capitalisation currently stands at $18.8 billion. Analysts have described the company as a “deteriorating asset,” but it is still one of the Web’s largest properties, says the Times.