US buyout firm Silver Lake and Russian investment firm DST Global are reported to be linking up with China e-commerce company Alibaba, bidding for US-based search engine Yahoo!, while US-based corporation Microsoft is also mulling a bid.
Jack Ma, the chairman of China-based e-commerce firm Alibaba, revealed on Saturday that he is interested in acquiring Yahoo!, and on Tuesday business news provider AllThingsD said private equity firm Silver Lake Partners and investment firm DST Global were possible partners for Alibaba in any such move.
Additionally, news agency Reuters named Microsoft as a possible bidder yesterday. Microsoft previously bid $47.5bn, or $33 a share, for Yahoo! in 2008 but with Yahoo!’s stock currently trading at around $15.50, the company would be valued at about $20bn. Reuters also named private equity firms Providence Equity Partners and Hellman & Friedman as potential buyers.
Under the terms of an agreement signed in 2009, the Microsoft-owned Bing currently powers Yahoo!’s search engine while ceding most of the advertising revenue back to Yahoo!. Acquiring Yahoo! would effectively double Microsoft’s share of the search engine market, though as Microsoft’s online services division has run at a substantial loss over the last few years, it is uncertain that Microsoft would want to spend so heavily in that area.