Jerry Yang enters race to take Yahoo private: report

With a host of technology and e-commerce companies, private equity firms and investors rumoured to be keen on buying Yahoo, another media report surfaced yesterday saying that Jerry Yang is also in the race to acquire the once internet giant that he co-founded in 1995 along with David Filo.

Yang is planning to put in place a consortium of private equity firms to launch a takeover of Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo that is currently worth around $20 billion, Reuters yesterday reported, citing people familiar with the situation.

Such a deal would involve Yang rolling over his 3.63-per cent stake in Yahoo, and Filo, with 5.9 per cent, is also likely to follow Yang's lead, said the news agency, citing other sources close to Yahoo.

Yahoo's low stock price coupled with an unimaginative board has become a lucrative game for investors out to make a quick buck on Yahoo that is said to be actually worth only $5 million after shedding its international assets.

Reuters suggested that a buyer could sell Yahoo's 40-per cent stake in Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba for $12 million and its 35-per cent stake in Yahoo Japan, a joint venture with Japanese internet company SoftBank, for another $3 million, leaving the buyer actually paying mere $5 billion for Yahoo's US and other operations.

The $20-million valuation for the fallen internet giant is a far cry from the $47.5 billion offered by Microsoft three years ago and spurned by Yahoo's board and the then CEO, Yang.