Not so fast: Private equity and News Corp are interested in Yahoo too

Silicon Valley Insider claims that some private equity firms were just days away from a deal to buy Yahoo.com.. At the same time, Techcrunch says News Corp and some hedge funds are also interested.

We all did a bunch of interviews at Yankee Group about this yesterday (mine was on NECN), but this point was left on the cutting room floor in all cases: the Microsoft takeover of Yahoo is a hostile offer, not a deal. Both the price and the buyer is subject to change. And the fact that Steve Ballmer took the offer public suggests that Yahoo rejected his offer, not accepted it.

Despite the fact that Microsoft's actually has lowered its offer to Yahoo since last summer, Yahoo.com is a prime Fifth Avenue property in Internet real estate. No one should be expecting it to go cheap, nor should anyone expect Yahoo to jump at the first offer.

My bet is that CEO Yang will fight for ABM as the buyer -- Anyone But Microsoft. From his point of view, a private equity deal might be the best of all worlds, since it would allow Yang to take a longer (but more debt-ridden) view in turning the company around. This deal is far from done.

Technorati Tags: Jerry Yang, Microsoft, Private equity, Yahoo, Yahoosoft