News Corp. Weighing a Yahoo Bid

The New York Times reports today that News Corporation has emerged as one of several major players weighing bids to acquire Yahoo. The other companies being mentioned are Silver Lake Partners, Microsoft and Alibaba, a Chinese Internet venture.

The most aggressive has been Alibaba — its CEO recently said he was “very interested” in Yahoo — but don’t count out News Corp., it has been making moves:

The media conglomerate has contacted Yahoo and several financial firms, including Silver Lake, according to three people with knowledge of the situation who requested anonymity because the talks were private.

The draw of Yahoo isn’t its Internet portion. The company has shares in Alibaba and a Japanese affiliate that could could grab Yahoo about $13 billion total, if sold off. Things get more murky when trying to figure out how much the rest of the company will fetch. As long as this doesn’t have any hints of the Myspace debacle, News Corp. is probably going to stay intrigued.

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