Microsoft’s recent plans of purchasing Yahoo, seems to be turned into reality. If the reports from Wall Street Journal are to be believed, Microsoft is working with the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and another private equity firm, The Silver Lake Partners, to assemble a bid to purchase Yahoo.
The much anticipated deal includes Microsoft squeezing out “several billion dollars,” along with Silver Lake and the CPP Investment Board actively providing the rest of the equity. All these resources are being fervently arranged by unnamed banks.
However this may come as a surprise, but this is not the only group who is preparing to bid for the purchase of Yahoo. According to the Wall Street Journal reports, there are “at least nine private equity firms … studying a potential buyout.”
Incidentally the latest information is released just a couple of weeks after it was believed that Microsoft might seek a partner for a Yahoo bid. Though it’s obvious that Microsoft longs for some control over Yahoo’s future, but apparently it is appears to be shy to go about it upfront maybe because of its spurned offer for Yahoo in January 2008.
In that deal, Microsoft submitted the unasked for $44.6 billion bid (equal to $31 per share then) for Yahoo, but the prospective purchase was fended off by Yahoo management, and resulted in the two companies agreeing to a search partnership and the ouster of then-CEO Jerry Yang.
That deal didn’t work out well for Yahoo, either, as it was reflected by its stock value. The share prices of Yahoo observed a dip from $29 just before it had refused Microsoft’s offer, to $15 per share by this September. However, when resurfaced in the early October of this year, Yahoo’s stock started climbing up again.
Now, according to The Wall Street Journal, some private equity firms believe that the deal could be closed somewhere between $16 and $18 per share. Yahoo stock closed today at $15.94 per share.
