Several private equity firms have approached Internet and media companies including News Corp and AOL Inc in recent weeks to gauge their interest in buying out Yahoo Inc, a source with knowledge of the approaches said on Wednesday.
A potential deal, however, would be contingent on Yahoo selling its prized Asian assets, including a 40 percent stake in China’s Alibaba (阿里巴巴), the source said on condition of anonymity.
That would help reduce Yahoo’s market value of more than US$20 billion now, making a deal more feasible. Discussions with News Corp and AOL began about two weeks ago and intensified in recent days, but Yahoo had not yet been approached as talks were still in their early stages, the source said.
News Corp, AOL and Yahoo declined comment. The source did not name the private equity firms.
Speculation of private equity interest in Yahoo, which is struggling to revitalize growth and stem an exodus of senior executives to rival companies, has surfaced sporadically in various Interneet reports in past months.
The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday reported Silver Lake Partners and Blackstone Group were among the private equity giants considering buying Yahoo, sending its shares soaring.
The Journal cited people familiar with the matter as saying private equity firms were exploring the possibility of teaming up with AOL on a joint bid, which could give AOL the content and online eyeballs it needs to remake itself into a news and entertainment powerhouse.
The private equity firms were also pondering taking the Yahoo private themselves, the Journal reported.
Among the scenarios discussed, one involved Alibaba Group buying back Yahoo’s 40 percent stake in the Chinese firm and Yahoo selling off assets to rival media and technology companies, the newspaper reported.
Another could involve AOL combining its operations with Yahoo in a reverse merger -- again after Yahoo sells its stake in Alibaba, China’s top online commerce firm, it said.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by