Updated 6:33 pm ET, Thursday, September 22
The revolving door of Yahoo CEOs may be closed for good.
After firing CEO Carol Bartz over a blunt telephone call on September 6, the company’s board has reportedly spent the past two weeks actively not looking for a replacement, instead reaching out to bigname media companies and private equity companies to gauge their interest in buying all or parts of the company, according to Henry Blodget at The Business Insider.
Blodget points to one main red flag in particular that this is Yahoo’s plan: The company hasn’t yet hired a search firm to look for Bartz’s replacement.
Instead Yahoo has been soliciting bids for Yahoo’s assets from at least three private-equity firms: SIlver Lake, Hellman & Friedman and Providence Equity Partners, according to reports from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
According to Blodget’s inside sources, Silver Lake is the closest to making a deal. Blodget points to Silver Lake’s $1.6 billion joint-investment in Yahoo Asian partner Alibaba as an indication that Silver Lake is indeed moving to buy all or some of the company.
But Blodget also says that Yahoo is also having trouble offloading its domestic assets and as such, has reached out to News Corp., Disney, Glam Media and Microsoft as potential buyers in a de-facto “yard sale.” “See something you like–point and make an offer,” Blodget writes.
Complicating the company’s plans, though, is that it is still beholden to its international partners Alibaba and Softbank. Yahoo has a 40 percent stake and is the largest outside investor in Alibaba, a Chinese web company that in turn controls and operates all of Yahoo China. Meanwhile, Yahoo also has a partnership with Japanese telecom company Softbank, which had a 42 percent stake in Yahoo Japan and a 30 percent stake in Alibaba (as well as a 4 percent stake in Yahoo, which it sold).
Yahoo and Softpay were involved in a nasty, months-long feud with Alibaba earlier this year when the company surprised them by announcing its plans to take an PayPal-like payments service public as a separate company. The dispute was eventually resolved, though residual mistrust and bitterness will likely complicate any Yahoo breakup.
Ultimately, the board is grasping at straws. As Blodget’s source characterizes their attitude: “Anyone with money have any ideas? Can they tell us what to do?”
Late update: A Yahoo spokesman reached out to Idea Lab via email to say that the company doesn’t comment on “rumor or speculation.”
