Daily Mail said to be mulling bid for Yahoo

11th Apr 2016 08:29

(ShareCast News) - The Daily Mail's parent company had held talks with half a dozen private equity outfits regarding a potential bid for some of US internet giant Yahoo's assets, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. US telecommunications outfit Verizon Communications was one of a wide group of parties who had expressed an interest ahead of an 18 April deadline for companies to submit bids, the Journal reported.The discussions were said to be at a "very early stage" and there was no certainty that a transaction would take place.According to the Journal, The Daily Mail&General Trust was just one of 40 players who had shown an interest in the US group.Yahoo had also held talks with Verizon, IAC/Interactive Corp. and CBS Corp., one of the persons cited by the Journal said.People familiar with the matter also told the US newspaper that a bid from the Daily Mail might take one of two forms.One option would be for a privaye equity partner to purchase all of Yahoo's operations in the States, with the Mail then acquiring the news and media properties - such as Yahoo Finance and Yahoo News.An alternative scenario would see the private-equity firm buy Yahoo and merge its media and news properties together with those of the Mail, such as the Daily Mail.com and Elite Daily.Under the second option, The mail would run that business and receive a bigger equity stake than in the first option.As of 10:35 BST shars in The Daily Mail&General Trust were almost unchanged, edging higher by just 0.22% to 697p.