AOL, PE firms explore buying Yahoo Inc

Media company AOL, along with private-equity firms, is "exploring" the options to make an offer to buy Yahoo Inc, as the Internet company deals with poor financial performance and an exodus of senior executives, a media report said. 

Silver Lake Partners and Blackstone Group LP are among the firms that have expressed interest in teaming up with AOL, or take it private on their own, said The Wall Street Journal quoting people familiar with the matter. 

"At least two or three other firms could be interested in participating, if a formal buyout proposal is drawn up," the report said. 

It added the discussions involving private equity firms, AOL executives and financial advisors are preliminary and do not yet involve Yahoo. 

"The conversations may not lead to an approach given the complexities in structuring a proposal," the report quoted the people as saying. 

The Journal said one of the scenarios being discussed is a "complex deal" in which China's Alibaba Group would buy back Yahoo's nearly 40 per cent stake in Alibaba. 

Some of Yahoo's other assets would also be sold off to interested media or technology companies. 

A second scenario involves AOL combining its operations with Yahoo in a "reverse merger" after Yahoo disposes of the Alibaba stake. 

Alibaba Chief Executive Jack Ma has expressed interest in repurchasing Yahoo's stake in his company, valued at about $10 billion. The Journal said AOL Chief Executive Tim Armstrong, too, has talked about the idea of Yahoo buying AOL. 

Private-equity firms may also look to partner with media companies to buy Yahoo. 

"A combined Yahoo-AOL would have greater scale to compete in online advertising against industry juggernaut Google Inc. While both companies draw huge amounts of users, their advertising businesses have struggled to deal with competition from others," the report said. 

Yahoo and AOL had discussed a merger in 2008, when the former weighed a $45 billion takeover offer from Microsoft. 

In recent weeks, as several senior Yahoo employees left the company, Chief Executive Carol Bartz has faced increasing pressure to prove she can reverse the company's fortunes. 

Earlier this month, Executive Vice-president of the Americas region Hilary Schneider, Senior Vice-president David Ko and Vice-president (Media) Jimmy Pitrao quit the company.

Yahoo has been facing stiff competition from social networking sites like Facebook, which are attracting greater numbers of online visitors and advertisers. 

Bartz has taken measures to cut costs, but Yahoo's revenue has not grown much. It also has seen a drop in the value of advertising against content that Yahoo pulls from other sources. 

AOL, which spun off from Time Warner in late 2009, has a market capitalisation of $2.68 billion. Yahoo has a $20.56 billion market value.