Will Alibaba buy Yahoo!?

David Heath
Monday, 05 December 2011 20:31

IT Industry - Listed Tech

There appear to be two possible bids either on the table or in the next room for Yahoo!  Will there be a bidding war between Microsoft and Alibaba?

When Yahoo!'s CEO Carol Bartz was sacked nearly three months ago, iTWire predicted a bid from Jack Ma of Alibaba to buy Yahoo!.  We don't appear to have been wrong.

Recent news of a possible buyout by a Microsoft-led consortium (for a much lower price than Yahoo! rejected a couple of years ago) led investors and commentators scrambling to see who else they thought might launch an offer.

It didn't take long for the answer to come up 'Alibaba.'

It would seem that Jack Ma, CEO of Alibaba has been itching for some time to reclaim the 40% state that Yahoo! has in his company and has finally seen a clear opportunity.

Rumours suggest that the Alibaba consortium (which includes Softbank, Bain Capital and The Blackstone Group)is planning to offer as much as $20/share, which will easily trump the $16.60 offered by the Microsoft group.

As Dan Primack reports, the two bids offer very different futures for Yahoo! and its current leadership.  The Microsoft bid should largely see the top of the company unchanged whereas the Jack Ma bid would see wholesale changes at the top.

And therein lies the problem for Yahoo!'s co-founder and current board-member Jerry Yang.  Read on...