Mergers and acquisitions
Britain's Daily Mail is reportedly making a bid for Yahoo
About 40 parties have expressed interest in bidding on all or part of Yahoo, and they have until April 18 to submit their offers. Verizon is probably the frontrunner, The Wall Street Journal reports, followed by IAC/InterActive and CBS Corp., but there's a new bidder showing interest: Britain's Daily Mail. The tabloid's parent company, Daily Mail & General Trust PLC, is exploring a joint bid with several private equity firms, and its main interest is Yahoo's news and other media properties, The Journal reports, citing "people familiar with the matter."
The Daily Mail has made a splash in the States, with what The Journal calls its "aggressive mix of news aggregation and celebrity and scandal coverage" earning the site 66.7 million unique U.S. visitors in February, according to comScore. Yahoo would give the British tabloid a much bigger footprint in the U.S. Among the other companies exploring bids are Time Inc, Microsoft, and some private equity firms. Along with its media properties, Yahoo owns lucrative stakes in China's Alibaba and Yahoo Japan.