AOL and Others Aim to Buy Yahoo

AOL Inc., and other companies are teaming up to buy Yahoo Inc., The Wall Street Journal has reported. According to WSJ, “a bold plan to marry two big Internet brands facing steep challenges” is being built.

The private-equity firms who want to buy the company are Silver Lake Partners and Blackstone Group LP. AOL and these companies are currently in preliminary discussions to negotiate with Yahoo. The executives and financial advisers of these companies have not contact Yahoo at the moment according to WSJ. At least two or three other firms could also interested once the proposal is made. Several scenarios are being discussed to build the negotiation plan with Yahoo, one of them includes the possibility of merging AOL with Yahoo.

AOL however, has a market capitalization that is far smaller than Yahoo’s. AOL has a market value of $2.68 billion while Yahoo has a significant higher $20.56 billion. Yahoo had one of the best performances in the stock market on Wednesday, when the stock traded 49,6 million shares in the regular session, compared with an average of 17 million shares a day they have had this month.

AOL recently acquired tech blog TechCrunch, app maker Things Labs and video network 5min.