Post date: Oct 14, 2010 7:0:14 PM
Shares of Yahoo took flight on speculation the firm could be a private equity take-out target involving other media companies like AOL or News Corp.
USA-YAHOO SNAP - Speculation is swirling around Internet media company Yahoo after a source says private equity firms are searching for a media partner for a possible takeover bid for Yahoo.
AOL, struggling to regain the relevance it had during the Internet's early years, is one of the top contenders, according to the source.
News Corp, owner of MySpace, was also a name mentioned.
A Yahoo-private equity deal "makes sense" given the company's stock price, but finding a partner will be hard, says an analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
While Yahoo remains the number two search engine, it has struggled to regain revenue growth and its buzz in recent years in wake of the rapid success of Google on the search side and Facebook on the social media side.
Conway Gittens, Reuters