San Francisco - Yahoo is holding separate talks with the same business partners courted by Microsoft in its takeover bid of the company, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. The talks come amid a flurry of activity ahead of a proxy shareholder vote on August 1 as Yahoo's current board attempts to persuade disgruntled stockholders they are doing everything needed to maximize shareholder value. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn is leading the revolt, charging that management deliberately sabotaged a 47.5 billion dollar takeover bid.
Since the unraveling of the sale Yahoo's shares have dropped from about 30 dollars to 20.18 Thursday.
According to the report, the talks with Time Warner focus on the possibility of folding AOL into Yahoo and giving Time Warner a minority stake in the company. Talks with News Corp involve a combination between Yahoo and News Corp's MySpace.
An earlier report in the Journal said that Microsoft had approached both those companies to partner it in a complicated deal in which the software giant would buy Yahoo's search business and the rest of the company would be broken up. Company founder and CEO Jerry Yang reportedly opposes this plan saying that Yahoo cannot build a top level advertising business without search.
Yahoo has signed a deal to run some Google ads alongside search results. Because Google's technology is better at matching relevant ads to those search results Yahoo predicts the deal could yield an extra 250 million dollars to 450 million dollars in its first year.
According to the Washington Post the Justice Department is examining if the deal between the two dominant advertising companies on the internet restricts competition in the market.
