Yahoo has many suitors, but board leans toward selling minority stake
(CBS/AP) - Yahoo's board of directors is not interested in selling the company outright to its many potential suitors. Instead they may opt to sell a small stake of the company to an investment group.
The New York Times reports the two top runners are investment groups TPG Capital and Silver Lake.
Selling a stake to the Silver Lake group could mean selling Yahoo's Asian holdings, new chief executive officer and three seats on Yahoo's board. The Times speculates venture capitalist and Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen could come on board. The investment group is offering a bid $16.60 per share.
Yahoo's other option of selling to TPG Capital could include a "possible alignment" with venture capital firm Greylock Partners. Professional social networking site LinkedIn's founder Reid Hoffman is a partner at Greylock. TPG Capital's bid is estimated at to be $1 more than Silver Lake's offer, according to the Time's sources.
Other firms considering buyouts of Yahoo are the Blackstone Group, Bain Capital, China's Alibaba Group and Japan's Softbank Corp.
According to the Associated Press, if the companies joined forces, their bid could be for more than $20 per share. That translates to into more than $25 billion, based on the 1.24 billion shares Yahoo had outstanding as of Oct. 31.
Yahoo's stock hasn't surpassed $20 in the past three years because of declining revenue.
Not all parties are on the same page yet. "Alibaba Group has not made a decision to be part of a whole-company bid for Yahoo," John Spelich, a spokesman for Alibaba told Bloomberg.
Although, some think a $20 per share bid would be a bargain. Financial analyst Di Zhou told Bloomberg he would place Yahoo's value at $25 per share because Asia's market has a large potential for growth.
It seems everyone has an interest in Yahoo's future.
Microsoft Corp. also has signed a confidentiality agreement to gain access to Yahoo's books, but the world's largest software maker doesn't appear to be in interested in buying the entire company like it was in 2008. Microsoft is more interested in protecting a 2009 deal to provide Yahoo with its search engine technology for 10-years.
No final decisions have been made by Yahoo's board yet.